VIDEO: Breaking the Colonial Grip on African Journalism

Editor’s Note: This panel discussion was produced by the African Peoples’ Forum.

Journalist and activist Elias Amare, U.S./Africa Bridge Building Project Director Imani Countess, American Ethiopian Public Affairs Committee (AEPAC) organizer Elias Hiruy, and medical doctor and #NoMore Movement co-founder Simon Tesfamariam discussed economic development as a human right at the first-ever African Peoples’ Forum. The event was held December 11 at the Eritrean Civic & Cultural Center in Washington, D.C. Journalist Hermela Aregawi and activist Yolian Ogbu moderated.

TF editor Julie Varughese reported on this event being held to counter the Biden administration’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.

 

 

Editor’s Note: Aside from federal terrorism charges against animal-rights and environmental activists, African descendants are active in the Stop Cop City movement. In 2017, the FBI created the “Black Identity Extremism” domestic terrorism category for African-descended activists in the United States. Light editing helped conform the following Unicorn Riot article to TF’s style.

ATLANTA, United States—On Dec. 14, Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams and other armed police officers from eight different federal, state, county, and city police agencies conducted a raid on those camping out in the Atlanta forest in hopes of preventing the construction of an 85-acre police training facility that opponents have dubbed “Cop City.”

During the raid, police shot tear gas and plastic bullets, and forced people out of the forest at gunpoint. Police in Bobcats and other heavy equipment destroyed treehouses, a communal kitchen, and other infrastructure built by those dedicated to the defense of the forest.

By the end of the two-day operation, a total of 12 people were arrested, according to police. At least six of those have been charged with a host of felonies, including state-level domestic terrorism charges, according to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund.

On Tuesday, Dec. 27, all six arrestees charged with domestic terrorism were granted bail totaling $51,000, with amounts per defendant ranging from $6,000 to $13,500. The six were also ordered to report to “pretrial services” within 48 hours, to refrain from contact with their co-defendants, and to refrain from “contact with Defend Atlanta Forest on social media.”

The Atlanta Solidarity Fund, an Atlanta-based bail fund, posted on social media their intention to bail the six out as soon as possible.

“The ‘domestic terrorism’ charges these protesters are facing are utterly baseless,” the group wrote on Twitter following the hearing. “Legal experts, including the ACLU, have warned prosecutors that there is no basis for such a case. We have been assembling a legal team to defend them every step of the way through the legal process.”

At a hearing on Dec. 15, Magistrate Judge Claire Jason denied bond to five of the arrestees charged with felonies.

“Each of you have been charged with domestic terrorism,” Jason said, appearing to read from a document on her screen. “Generally, the information that I have on the affidavit of warrant… You did participate in actions of DTAF (Defend the Atlanta Forest) a group that’s been classified by the United States Department of Homeland Security as a domestic violent extremist group.”

Those involved in the movement to defend the forest deny that the group, “Defend the Atlanta Forest,” even exists. Writing on Twitter Friday, Dec. 16, from the handle, @DefendATLForest, those running the platform explained, “’Defend the Atlanta Forest’” is the name of a movement and it is also the username of a submission-based social media platform. It is not a group. We do not organize any actions and we don’t know the people who do.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland security did not respond to questions from Unicorn Riot regarding the alleged domestic violent extremist group classification. However, arrest warrants and affidavits obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution indicate that those arrested are being charged with domestic terrorism simply due to their affiliation with the “group.” The documents state that the Department of Homeland Security classifies “Defend the Atlanta Forest” as “Domestic Violent Extremists.”

Some affidavits say the offense is “16-10-24 Domestic Terrorism.” However, as of 2021, that Georgia state law does not include any references to domestic terrorism—it only pertains to “obstructing or hindering law enforcement.” Another affidavit says the offense is “16-4-10 Domestic Terrorism,” although this appears to be a mistake by prosecutors and the judge, as that section is currently repealed according to Justia.com. However, there is a domestic terrorism statute on the books in Georgia.

Cop City Opponents Aim to Stop Construction

The encampments and tree sits within the 380-acre expanse of forest have been constructed, destroyed by police, and reconstructed several times throughout the year. Those living in the trees and supporting them from afar are trying to prevent the razing of the forest and the construction of the Atlanta Police Foundation’s Public Safety Training Center, currently scheduled to open in late 2023.

The facility carries a price tag of $90 million for its initial phase. In September 2021, Atlanta’s city council approved a proposal to construct the facility within a huge swath of forested land in unincorporated DeKalb County, southeast of Atlanta, some of which is owned by the city of Atlanta.

​​Other sections of the forest are also in danger of destruction. Last year, film company executive Ryan Milsap, former owner of Blackhall Studios (recently rebranded Shadowbox Studios), was given forty acres of forested land called Intrenchment Creek Park just west of the planned police facility in a controversial land swap. Opponents of Milsap responded to an escalation he made on July 30 by setting a work truck on fire.

Milsap has stated publicly that he plans to raze the forest to build 1.2 million square feet of sound stage, which would make it the largest film studio in the state.

“I want to be clear, the people that the police are attacking with plastic bullets with chemical weapons, as recently as yesterday, these people were not involved in threatening anybody,” said Marlon Kautz of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund at a press conference on Wednesday. “They were not involved in endangering anybody. They were sitting passively in trees trying to express a political position. And for sitting in trees, trying to conduct a non-violent protest, they were attacked by police, arguably tortured with chemical weapons.”

On Tuesday night, in the midst of the raid, activists called for a protest at the Dekalb County Jail where those who had already been arrested were held. They beat drums, shouted, and chanted so that those held behind the jail’s walls could hear them. In response, detainees in the jail banged on windows, waved, and even lit a fire.

This is not the first time people have been arrested and charged with crimes for protesting against the project, but it is the first time authorities have charged protestors with domestic terrorism. The first arrests associated with the movement came in September 2021 when activists were protesting outside the homes of several City Council members in the midst of the council’s vote to approve the Cop City project. The protests were held at City Council members’ homes because the meeting took place remotely.

A Trend Continues: Leftist Activists Get Pinned with Terrorism Charges

There is a longstanding precedent for terrorism charges being used against animal rights and environmental activists. According to a 2019 study by The Intercept, of the 70 federal prosecutions of animal and environmental activists they identified, the government sought terrorism enhancements in 20. Overall, the use of terrorism charges has risen dramatically in recent years, peaking in 2020. The rate of federal terrorism prosecutions has increased 388 percent since 2017.

Watch our mini documentary – Defending the Atlanta Forest: Behind the Movement to Stop Cop City

Although the FBI is involved in the repression of the movement to save the forest, those arrested Tuesday face state-level terrorism charges, brought by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).

However, activists associated with the campaign to save the forest have raised doubts over whether these charges will actually stick.

“The GBI knows that these charges will not hold up in court, and they are not intended to: The point is to raise the stakes of protesting,” said a spokesperson for the Defend the Atlanta Forest campaign in a press release. “Their goal is to create a chilling effect across the city, scaring off anyone concerned about police militarization and the climate crisis from taking action.”

Despite the rhetoric currently being wielded by the GBI and other law enforcement agencies, which seek to portray the movement to defend the forest as a militant fringe group, the Cop City project remains wildly unpopular among a broad segment of Atlantans, including those who will be forced to live closest to it. Even a local preschool has gotten involved in the fight to save the forest.

Activists say police are escalating the level of violence and repression they are using against the movement as its success and popularity grows. Kautz, of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, told reporters Wednesday:

“When the Stop Cop City movement began, police tried to use intimidation to dissuade activists. And when that didn’t work, they began making baseless arrests, which the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has documented and is providing legal support to defend people in those cases.”

Kautz continued:

“When the baseless arrests failed to discourage people from speaking out about the problems that they saw with Cop City, we got to where we are now, with the police using open brutality to try to suppress them. “Are we going to end up in a situation where the police are murdering protesters in order to advance, not public safety, but their particular political agenda? Are we going to end up in a situation where the police are murdering protesters in order to advance, not public safety, but their particular political agenda? No, they’re going to be learning urban warfare tactics to harass our communities, to surveil us, to prevent us from doing things like gathering here today and letting the public know what’s going on.”

Editor’s Note: This analysis originally appeared in NewsGhana.

Several geopolitical powers are seeking to enhance their influence and cooperation with the continent of Africa.

United States President Joe Biden announced during July that he would host a summit with African leaders at the White House in December. This announcement by Biden comes in the aftermath of several important political developments which have exposed the ineffective foreign policy orientation of the world’s leading capitalist country. Within the United Nations, many African states abstained from two resolutions which condemned the Russian Federation during the early phase of Moscow’s special military operation in neighboring Ukraine.

In addition, most African governments have not made pronouncements in favor of the war program of the U.S. Compounding these complicated relationships is the reliance by several AU states on Russian and Ukrainian agricultural products and inputs. The imposition of unprecedented sanctions by the Biden administration and the European Union (EU) has hampered the flow of goods and services.

The two leading officials of the AU, President Macky Sall of Senegal, who is the chair of the continental organization and Commissioner Chair, Moussa Faki Mahamat, traveled to Sochi in June to hold high-level discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The AU statement issued in the aftermath of the meeting reiterated the position of the organization that the conflict in Ukraine should be resolved diplomatically through negotiations. This is a position at variance with the Biden presidency which has openly declared that the administration wants to remove Putin from power and weaken Russia as a world power.

Also, the talks between Putin and the AU resulted in the reconvening of the Russia-Africa Summit which will meet towards the end of the year in Ethiopia. In fact, during late July, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov embarked upon a tour to several African countries including Egypt, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said in a press conference with Lavrov that the enemies of the U.S. were not the adversaries of his government. He noted that Uganda wants to trade with the U.S., Russia and any other country which respects its independence and sovereignty.

The Russian envoy emphasized that Moscow has always supported Africa in the struggle against colonialism. Museveni exclaimed during the press conference held at Entebbe: “How can we be against somebody who has never harmed us? If Russia makes mistakes, we tell them. When they have not made mistakes, we can’t be against them.”

A report published by the Tass News Agency said of the Kremlin’s chief envoy’s trip to Africa emphasizing: “Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrived on Tuesday (July 26) in Ethiopia on a working visit, TASS reports from the site. On Wednesday, Lavrov is expected to hold talks with his Ethiopian counterpart Demeke Mekonnen. The top diplomat visits Ethiopia on the last leg of his tour of Africa. From Ethiopia, he will travel to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s Council of Foreign Ministers.”

Lavrov visited four African states during his tour. These countries were Egypt, Congo-Brazzaville, Uganda and Ethiopia, where the AU headquarters is located in the capital of Addis Ababa. The Russian foreign minister denied the allegations made by the U.S. and the EU that Moscow is responsible for the global food crisis.

According to Ahram online, published in Cairo, Egypt, Lavrov said: “There is a very loud campaign around this, but our African friends understand their root cause. They are not related to what is happening within the special military operation.”

France Attempting to Recover Lost Credibility

French President Emmanuel Macron started an African trip at the same time as Lavrov’s visit across the continent. France has come under fire in recent months for its military presence in several countries including the Central African Republic, Mali and Burkina Faso. The CAR and Malian governments are utilizing Russian military consultants from the Wagner Group, which Moscow has denied is an arm of its foreign policy.

Nonetheless, the burgeoning hostility towards Paris within its former colonies on the continent has proved to be worrisome for the Macron government. French military and diplomatic personnel in Mali were requested to leave the country immediately. France has maintained a military presence in many of its former colonies since the 1960s. These forces have intervened in internal political struggles in a manner which benefits France and not necessarily the African states involved.

Although Macron is obviously seeking to counter the heightened scrutiny being placed on France’s involvement in Africa, it is by no means clear what Paris has to offer countries such as Cameroon, Mali, Guinea-Conakry, the CAR, Ivory Coast, among others. In recent years, France has attempted to bolster its CFA zone domination over currencies in various African states even to the point of proposing a new monetary system which would maintain links to Paris.

Even the U.S. State Department-funded Voice of America (VOA), wrote on the mission of the French president while he visited Cameroon noting that: “Macron said European economic sanctions on Russia, which are having an indirect effect on Africa, are intended to stop Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty and not to punish Africans. He said France is interested in the well-being of civilians in both African countries and Ukraine. The visiting French president did not say how much France would invest to boost agricultural production in Africa, but said Cameroon is one of the countries chosen for agricultural investments. The U.N. says that Africa depends on Russia and Ukraine for more than 50 percent of its wheat imports.”

Such an admission by the VOA utilizing United Nations data raises the question of why have African governments turned to Russia to meet their domestic consumption demands? France’s foreign policy orientation has heavily relied on military force to advance its strategic interests in Africa.

Moreover, in recent months since the expulsion of French diplomatic and military personnel from Mali, it has become necessary for Macron to advance a new and ostensibly more “compassionate” approach towards various African states. Such a superficial policy shift conflicts with statements made by Macron leading up to the 60th anniversary of Algerian independence when the French leader suggested that atrocities committed by its colonial officials have been exaggerated by successive administrations in Algiers. France controlled Algeria as a colonial outpost for 132 years. Millions of Algerians lost their lives to French forces through massacres dating back to the 19th century notwithstanding the counter-insurgency operations during the war of independence between 1954-1962, when Paris withdrew its military from the North African state.

Biden Maintains Same Imperialist Policy Towards Africa

Mike Hammer, the U.S. Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa, began a tour to Ethiopia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates on July 24. Supposedly the purpose of Hammer’s trip was to facilitate a settlement surrounding the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the status of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) project.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has opposed the GERD saying it will redirect water from the Blue Nile jeopardizing the well-being of its people. The current demarcations for usage from the strategic waterway was instituted by Britain during its colonial domination over Egypt in late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ethiopia maintains that GERD utilizing its full capacity would be beneficial to the entire regions of North and East Africa.

What is significant about the U.S. posture as a mediator in this dispute is that the previous administration of President Donald Trump sided openly with Egypt in 2020, even encouraging Cairo to “blow up” the GERD project. The Biden administration, similarly to Trump’s, has worked to either weaken or overthrow the Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

Biden and many members of the Democratic Party in Congress have imposed a ban on Ethiopia’s participation in the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) program which has been in operation since the concluding days of the administration of former President Bill Clinton. In addition to the purging of Ethiopia from AGOA, the Congress had threatened to pass legislative measures designed to implement even more draconian sanctions on the Horn of Africa state which houses the headquarters of the AU.

As a result of Washington’s posture towards Ethiopia, many women garment workers have had their plants closed due to lack of demand from the U.S. Hammer claims that the Biden administration is concerned about the equitable and efficient distribution of aid to Ethiopia where the government has battled the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in the north of the country. Successive U.S. administrations have supported the TPLF during its period in power from 1991-2018, when their government collapsed as a result of a national uprising in Ethiopia.

These factors must be taken into consideration when evaluating the diplomatic competition taking place between Washington, Paris and Moscow. If recent events are any indication, the African people along with their governments will struggle to make decisions which benefit the continent as opposed to the western imperialist states.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire, an international electronic press service designed to foster intelligent discussion on the affairs of African people throughout the continent and the world. The press agency was founded in January of 1998 and has published thousands of articles and dispatches in newspapers, magazines, journals, research reports, blogs and websites throughout the world. The PANW represents the only daily international news source on pan-african and global affairs.