Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Uhuru Solidarity Movement condemns Obama’s war and torture of African and Arab people – from Guantanamo to U.S. prisons, from Libya to Philadelphia!



Calling all progressive Euro-Americans to come to the Uhuru Solidarity Movement National Convention on June 4 and 5, 2011 in Philadelphia, PA: “Resistance is the Future! Solidarity with African Liberation!”


On Monday, April 25, two reports were released – both vividly demonstrating the depth of the brutality with which the Obama administration is carrying out and intensifying the U.S. aggression and warfare against African and Arab peoples, inside the U.S. and worldwide.

President Obama, promising “hope” and “change” in his election campaign, has in fact escalated the war on Arab and African people at home and abroad. He has initiated the first war by AFRICOM on Africa, with the bombing of Libya and the brutal murder of the Libyan people.

It is Obama who has intensified the attacks on the people of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Haiti, Congo, Colombia and the Israeli genocide on the Palestinian people in Gaza. It is Obama that is attacking the African community in the U.S. with increasing police violence, increasing direct military occupation and mass imprisonment of young Africans.

Guantanamo leaks lift lid on world’s most controversial prison

The Guardian newspaper released an article titled: “Guantanamo leaks lift lid on world’s most controversial prison,” based on the leaking of 759 “secret” U.S. military dossiers covering almost every prisoner since the U.S. prison camp was opened in 2002.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-lift-lid-prison

This report reveals the real criminality of the neocolonial Obama regime that carried out mass torture of the 779 mostly Arab men captured and held at Guantanamo in the name of the “war on terror.”

It states that over two years after Obama promised to close Guantanamo, 172 people are still there, unable to even stand trial as they have been so badly tortured over a prolonged period.

It speaks of outrageous rights abuses inflicted on the captives, the vast majority of whom were brought there on ridiculous grounds, including an 89-year-old Afghan villager with dementia. He was brought to the concentration camp to be interrogated about some “suspicious phone numbers.” There is also the 14-year-old boy, tortured for his “possible knowledge of Taliban local leaders.”

The exposé showed that of the 779 prisoners at Guantanamo, the overwhelming majority, 606, were cleared and released by the U.S. due to “no intelligence showing any threat to the U.S. and its allies.”

This rate of false imprisonment is similar to that of the “Stop and Frisk” police policy. In Philadelphia, a quarter of a million people, mostly young African men, were stopped and harassed by the police in 2009 alone. Less than three percent of those was found to have weapons, which was the rationale for this gross abuse of African people’s democratic rights.

Systemic torture of Africans imprisoned in Pennsylvania

The second paper released on April 25 documents the chilling and systemic torture of Africans imprisoned in Pennsylvania’s state prison, SCI Huntingdon.
http://hrcoalition.org/sites/default/files/Unity%20and%20Courage-SCI%20Huntingdon%20Report.pdf

The Human Rights Coalition based this report on a year-long investigation and over 1000 pages of letters, grievances, affidavits and testimonies from prisoners. It shows the courageous resistance by prisoners in solitary confinement in Huntingdon’s Restricted Housing Unit, where they faced the most unimaginable torture and degradation.

It describes the “culture of torture and terror” fostered by the guards and endorsed by the prison administration and the PA Department of Corrections. Africans were deprived of food, water, clothing, bedding and hygiene items. They were starved, were threatened with death, beaten and tortured for any form of resistance.

In September and October 2010, prisoners organized a protest of these conditions. Guards sprayed them with a toxic chemical, “O.C.”, and left them to burn with no water to wash it off.

As horrendous and appalling as the treatment of Africans and others in PA prisons revealed by the report is, we can’t be surprised by it.

We saw how many of the U.S. military guards who tortured Arab prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq were trained in PA prisons like SCI Greene and SCI Huntingdon.

U.S. torture techniques are practiced and perfected on African people kidnapped from cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and held in the dungeons of U.S. prisons, U.S. concentration camps.

The Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM) absolutely condemns this collective punishment of African, Arab, Mexican and all oppressed people by the U.S. government.

We must stand up as white people living in the belly of imperialism and defend the right of the African community and all others to organize and resist the colonial terror being waged every day against their people.

In February we saw the military occupation and siege of a 33-block radius of the African community on the south side of St. Petersburg, FL, the location of the national office of the Uhuru Movement after a cop was killed. This was no different than how the U.S. marines operate in Afghanistan.

Homeland Security, FBI, SWAT teams and many other police agencies carried out door-to-door searches. They stopped cars and busses going in and out of the community and stuck guns in children’s faces. The police didn’t even know who they were looking for, but the entire African community was locked down and under siege. This is colonial occupation!

We have to say that just as the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and throughout the Middle East and North Africa have the right to resist their poverty and oppression at the hands of U.S.-backed regimes, so do African people in the U.S. have the right to resist.

We have to recognize that U.S. occupation of communities of Arab and African people from Afghanistan to Philadelphia, and kidnapping, imprisonment and torture of prisoners, is part of the U.S. colonial war on African and other oppressed peoples worldwide.

The Uhuru Movement shows that imperialism is in the deepest crisis of its existence

The U.S. and imperialist economy can only exist on stolen resources – oil, gold, diamonds, bauxite, coltan – and all the wealth and minerals stolen daily by U.S. corporations, the World Bank and IMF from Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.

Today, the crisis is deepening because oppressed people are fighting fiercely to control their own resources and regain their self-determination – from Iraq, to Haiti, and inside the U.S.

Obama has the largest military budget of all time


In a desperate attempt to control the world’s resources, Obama has the largest military budget of all time: $700 billion. The U.S. government spends $200 billion every year on the war on African people in the U.S.

Philadelphia alone spends $1.1 billion a year on police, prisons and courts. This is counterinsurgency war that builds the trillion dollar prison economy by terrorizing a whole young generation of African people – from places like north and southwest Philly!

Call to build a real anti-war movement

We have the urgent responsibility to build a real anti-war movement from the white community in solidarity with African people’s just resistance and liberation struggle!

We condemn ALL U.S. colonial wars and call for all other white people like ourselves who are tired of hearing these atrocities that the U.S. government carries out in our name, and who are compelled to do something to change this reality, to join Uhuru Solidarity Movement and come to the USM National Convention on June 4 and 5 in Philadelphia.

The Uhuru Solidarity Movement is the organization of Euro-Americans or white people who organize under the leadership of the African-led Uhuru Movement for reparations and material solidarity with the struggle for African liberation, in the U.S. and worldwide.

It is the ONLY organization in the world where we can truly make a difference because we work under the strategy and leadership of the rising African Revolution.

Being active in USM is how we can change our historic relationship as colonial oppressors of African and other people.

This is the only way we can start to reverse the history of imperialism, where we live off the wealth and power created from the enslavement of African people and the genocide of Indigenous people – who are still captive in the other concentration camps, the so-called reservations, living in poverty and dying at an average age of 44 years!

Come to the Uhuru Solidarity Movement Convention – June 4 and 5 in Philadelphia

This year’s Convention will feature
  • Keynote speaker Omali Yeshitela, founder and leader of the Uhuru Movement and Chairman of the African Socialist International
  • Diop Olugbala, International President of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement
  • Glen Ford, Executive Editor of BlackAgendaReport.com and member of the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations
  • Nellie Bailey, Director of the Harlem Tenants Council (also member of Black is Back Coalition)
  • Pam Africa of MOVE and the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
  • Penny Hess, Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee
Learn more about the Convention on the USM website. Register by emailing registration@uhurusolidarity.org.

STAND UP AGAINST U.S. WARS AND TORTURE!

ATTEND THE UHURU SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT CONVENTION!

GET ORGANIZED TO PARTICIPATE IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE FUTURE OF RESISTANCE AND LIBERATION FOR AFRICAN AND ALL OPPRESSED PEOPLES!

UHURU! REPARATIONS NOW!

Links:
• Learn more and JOIN the Uhuru Solidarity Movement: www.uhurusolidarity.org.
• Uhuru News: www.uhurunews.com
• Black is Back Coalition: www.blackisbackcoalition.org

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