During the last weeks, there have been ongoing and massive protests in Kenya against a new tax bill, which will hit the poorest classes of society even harder. The increase in taxes, voted as part of the approval of the draft state budget, have sparked an intense political confrontation. The peak of the mobilizations and demonstrations against the bill, were the mass demonstrations in the capital of Kenya, in Nairobi on June 25th (the day the bill was passed), where groups of protesters managed to break the police stranglehold and set fire to the parliament, from which MPs (members of parliament) and ministers fled through a tunnel. That day, at least 30 protesters were killed by the murderous state supression. The ferocity of the protests even forced the government to back down and withdraw the budget.
Kenya, like most of the African countries, has a harsh past of colonialism from western forces. The regime of colonialism, imposed in Asia, Africa and Latin America, ensured huge profits for the Western States and was perpetuated by extreme state terrorism and poverty/impoverishment of indigenous populations. In most cases, even when the colonial regime formally ended, those countries remained under the strong influence and control of Western states which continued to derive enormous wealth from the exploitation of cheap labor and the plundering of the natural world. For the continuation of this strategy, the Western states found willing allies in the rising bourgeois classes of these countries, which maintain their position mainly through brutal repression.
The mass protests and clashes in Kenya are a bright reminder to the oppressed of this world that even in the darkest of times and under the harshest of regimes, the vision of freedom and equality cannot be stifled. The vision of a better world breathes in the dozens of uprisings of recent years all over the planet.
It is crucial that we step up this fight globally. (It’s crucial) to build relations of solidarity and comradeship beyond the limitations of borders, to exchange experiences, to learn from each other, to fight side by side against every power. To spread the flame of uprising all over the world, to the global social revolution, to the end of every power. To the creation of a world of solidarity, equity, freedom, to Anarchy
anarchist collective Acte
acte.espivblogs.net /acte@riseup.net