BAP Condemns Kidnapping and Torture of Kenyan Revolutionary Leader
By: Black Alliance for Peace Africa Team
The Black Alliance for Peace Africa Team and the U.S. Out of Africa Network stand in revolutionary solidarity with our Comrade Booker Ngesa Omole, Secretary General of the Communist Party Marxist Kenya (CPM-K), and we demand his immediate release, access to emergency medical care, and the immediate withdrawal of all fabricated charges against him.
As of this writing, we have learned that Comrade Booker Ngesa Omole was violently abducted and tortured on the evening of February 23rd and is being held at Mlolongo Police Station. He was scheduled to appear in court on February 26th, where the state intends to charge him with assault, a grotesque and cynical inversion of reality in which the victim of state torture is accused of being the aggressor. We are monitoring the outcome of that hearing and await further reporting from our comrades on the ground in Kenya.
Comrade Omole was beaten severely. He was tortured throughout the night. His tooth was broken. His finger was cut with a pen knife. He was brutalized to near death by officers of the Kenya Police Service. To charge him with assault is a continuation of the torture by other means. It is the state attempting to give its criminal violence the veneer of legality.
The physical assaults and denial of medical care are crimes. The Kenyan state is known for its willingness to commit acts of brutality and we have no doubt that it is willing to let Comrade Omale die in custody from his injuries. The international community must act now to prevent another state murder disguised as “detention.”
Comrade Omole is being targeted because he is a leader of the organized working class. He was abducted, tortured, and now framed because he represents a threat to a neocolonial system that cannot tolerate revolutionary ideas. Because the Kenyan state, with the backing of its U.S. and European imperial masters, has decided that the price of resisting exploitation is state terror.
This is the same Kenyan state that has volunteered its police forces to serve as the Black face of white supremacy in the U.S.-led occupation of Haiti. This is the same state that receives millions in military and police aid from the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and the U.S. Department of State. The guns, the training, the ideology of repression, all of it flows from the empire to its local enforcers.
Free Booker Ngesa Omole Now!
Medical Care Now!
Drop the Bogus Charges!
U.S. Out of Africa! Shut Down AFRICOM!
No Compromise, No Retreat!