Kenya - June 29, 2024
A nation strangled by the IMF offensive that the masses respond with a heroic anti-imperialist fight by burning the pro-USA bourgeois Parliament…
LONG LIVE THE SLAVE UPRISING AGAINST THE IMF AND IMPERIALISM AND THEIR POLITICAL LACKEYS OF THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARLIAMENT!
Imperialism out of Kenya and all of Africa!
Shouting “Out with all the politicians!” and "Let the regime fall!", the Kenian exploited and youth stormed the parliament, revolting against the imperialism-driven price hike. And in the midst of their revolutionary fury they burned the bourgeois Parliament that only votes laws tailored to imperialism. That is why the exploited led this heroic anti-imperialist uprising against the looting and control of that oppressed nation exercised by the IMF, from which it sucks every last drop of its wealth.
In a true semi-spontaneous insurrection, the masses of Kenya seek to destroy the citadel of power, but in order to get victory they must advance in arming the people and horizontally breaking an army that represses the masses and is a lackey of imperialism.
Kenya is a nation strangled by imperialism for a phenomenal foreign debt equal to 70% of its GDP. In the midst of a huge budget deficit and great corruption, W. Ruto's lackey government launched an offensive against the masses in a country where 50% of the population lives at the bottom of the poverty index, and there are areas where the 90% are below this index. The thing is that he has to assume the repayment of the debt, and to do so he sent a brutal blow on the exploited that unleashed a spontaneous uprising for bread against imperialism, the IMF, the lackey government and all its politicians.
On Tuesday, June 25, in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and also in cities such as Mombasa, Kisumu, Eldoret, Nyeri and Nakuru, thousands of young people and workers took to the streets expressing their anger against a public finance bill, which the IMF has ordered so that Kenya is able to repay the enormous foreign debt it maintains with this organization.
Since the previous week, the masses had been carrying huge demonstrations throughout the country demanding the non-approval of said bill. The repression was fierce and on Thursday, June 20, there were two protestors killed and at least 200 injured. The demonstrations, which were gaining in crudeness, pushed the MPs to annul some taxes such as the one on bread (16%) and another on money transfers by telephone. But it was not enough to calm the anger of the slaves.
Therefore, the organizers of these demonstrations declared “7 days of rage” calling for a “total shutdown” in Kenya for Tuesday the 25th. Who are the organizers?
The young people, workers, fed up with the increase in the cost of living, with the poor living conditions, demanded the withdrawal of the finance bill shouting “We are coming to get all the politicians” and “Ruto must go.”
The exploited identified very well where their enemy was, they headed to that den of bandits off the Parliament and attacked it and its MPs that had just voted in favor of this public finance bill. The protestors burned part of the building, while the legislators fled in terror, leaving the building through a tunnel in the face of the hatred of the masses. The thing is that the masses had realized that those MPs did not represent them, which is why they shouted “now we are here to represent ourselves.”
There was looting in some public offices; in the parking lot of the Supreme Court of Kenya, vehicles were set on fire; the protesters forced the police barricades to enter Parliament, stones flew through the air, while near this building you could see that the Nairobi Governor's Office was also burning.
And although the government was forced to withdraw the finance bill, the exploited still continue on the streets and even bury their martyrs without stopping the mobilization.
The police response was a brutal repression to stop the rebellious masses
The notoriously heavy-handed Kenyan police attacked the demonstration, firing live bullets, tear gas, and using water cannons to disperse the crowd. Three army trucks transported reinforcements to secure the surroundings of Parliament, where dozens of protesters clashed with police. At least three corpses could be seen in the streets; this fierce repression spread to the other cities.
According to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, 22 killed were recorded, 19 of them in Nairobi. “This is the highest number of deaths in a single day of protest,” they said, adding that 300 people had been injured across the country. This repression was completed with the persecution, imprisonment and kidnapping of the protesters.
Meanwhile hundreds of Kenyan police officers, denounced for abuses by human rights organizations, we're landing in Haiti, all under the USA command at the service of their policy of colonization and occupation of that country. This earned Kenya praise from Joe Biden who designated it as an “important non-NATO ally.” How cynical!
Long live the slave uprising!
At the beginning of the uprising, the government was forced to announce the withdrawal of most of the measures, but the masses with good instincts perceived this as a deception by the government and then demanded the complete withdrawal of the text of the finance bill. And they also denounce the government for wanting to compensate the withdrawal of some fiscal measures for others, in particular a 50% increase in taxes on fuel.
The masses experience firsthand the plundering of imperialism and the IMF and its transnationals such as Unilever, Coca Cola, Mastercard, IBM, Microsoft as part and parcel of the plunder throughout the African continent. The struggle of the exploited Kenyans against the government and against the US and the IMF is part of the anti-imperialist struggle of all of Africa and of the oppressed masses of the colonies and semi-colonies of the world.
The working class, leading the poor peasants, the combative youth, has to take into their own hands the resolution of their hardships and the liberation from their chains,
expelling the IMF, breaking all ties with imperialism.
Stop persecuting, imprisoning, kidnapping and disappearing those who fight! Dissolution now of the police and the whole forces of repression!
In order to succeed, the working class has to set up self-organizing bodies by establishment, city, region, neighborhood. Surrounding the barracks, it has to call their sons, brothers, who are in the army to break with the officer caste and go over to the side of the people. For committees of common soldiers!
Generalized arming for the masses in struggle! Let’s set up worker and peasant militias to be able to expel imperialism and its lackey William Ruto government!
It's them or us!
So that the people can eat: Expropriation without compensation of the lands, to give them to the impoverished peasants! that are exploited by multinationals so that they return to the hands of their true owners and are distributed among agricultural workers and peasants who are 80% of the population and generate 65% of exports. Expropriation without compensation and under workers control, of the transnationals that take away the tea, the coffee, the vegetables, the milk!
Expropriation of the bankers without compensation, and a single state bank under the control of the workers and a monopoly on foreign trade, to give cheap credit to the peasants! There is the money for quality health and education and all the demands of the people poor!
We must expropriate without compensation and under workers' control all USA transnational corporations, which steal all our natural wealth and also steal the land that belongs to us.
Transnationals, get out of Kenya! Out with imperialism and the IMF!
Out with all the military bases of all the imperialist powers in the entire Africa!
The struggle of the exploited in Kenya is the outpost of the struggle of the entire African continent devastated by multinationals. It is the same fight against the same enemy: imperialism. For this reason, the working class and the people poor of Niger, Somalia, Senegal, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Congo, South Africa cannot remain outside of the stream of the uprising of the exploited in Kenya.
We must surround this Kenyan fight with a unified struggle to expel imperialism and defeat its lackey governments.
We must reunite the internationalist ties traced by the slave route with our class brothers from USA and imperialist Europe, especially black and coloured workers; they are our best allies because they are in the heart of the imperialism that plunders the continent of Black Africa. Because black lives matter!
In unity and an internationalist combat lay the strength to defeat our oppressive governments and free our nations from the imperialist yoke. For a Federation of Black Republics of Central and Southern Africa!
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