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.
A panel of environmental and human rights activists acted as judges in a People’s Health Tribunal organized by African communities impacted by the operations of extractive corporations Shell and Total Energy. Supported by organizations like Medact, We the People, the People’s Health Movement, #STOPEACOP, and others, they found the corporations guilty of harming the health of people across Africa. Nnimmo Bassey, Jacqueline Patterson, Kanahaus Manuel, and Dimah Mahmoud condemned Shell and Total’s activities, stating that they were “extremely harmful to the livelihoods, health, right to shelter, quality of life, right to live in dignity, quality of environment, right to live free of discrimination and oppression, right to clean water, and right to self-determination.”
This edition of the People’s Health Tribunal was built as activists witnessed extensive greenwashing by the oil and gas industry at COP 27 in Egypt last year. In response, they became even more determined to support the struggles of communities in Africa who are affected by the corporations who attempted to gaslight the public at COP 27.
However, governments in the Global North, where most extractive corporations have their headquarters, still choose to ignore the destruction caused by these industries. In 2022, Shell made a profit of $40 billion, while Total Energy ended the year with US$36 billion in profits. These profits came at the expense of the health and lives of people living in regions where these corporations operate.
Uprooting Set the Ground for Total’s LNG Operations in Mozambique
Decades of exploitation of African land have resulted in devastating consequences, including air pollution, water contamination, deforestation, violence, land grabbing, and forced migration. People in the Niger Delta and Mozambique experience these things daily. Omar Elmawi, who provided an overview of Total’s impact on Mozambique communities, emphasized that in the current situation, “everyone loses, except Total.” Elmawi said he believed that African countries must take control of their own resources and development to make sure that justice is restored.
In Mozambique, Total Energy’s plan to construct an onshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility led to the displacement of hundreds of families dependent on farming. Total’s plans also decimated traditional fishing activities, leaving people destitute. Instead of providing the uprooted communities with adequate living conditions and compensation, the company’s plan resulted in people being left without shelter, living in refugee camps, and exposed to violence.
At the same time, pointed out Elmawi, the company was not shying away from tax evasion, bleeding even more resources out of the country and leaving Mozambique without necessary means to build essential infrastructure.
Similar experiences were echoed by activists from Uganda and South Africa, who bore witness to the baleful behavior of Total Energy and Shell in the face of the communities which they so violently entered. The testimonies also highlighted the environmental impacts being shouldered by the same communities, as floods and storms regularly devastate local food production.
Shell Operations in the Niger Delta
Shell has been furiously extracting resources in the Niger Delta for over 60 years, attracting more companies to exploit the region due to its rich reserves. Videos from villages in the Niger Delta clearly show oil contamination of water sources, while Shell ignores the grievances raised by the communities. With Shell’s arrival, people’s health deteriorated, in addition to the environmental devastation caused by oil and gas extraction. People began suffering from previously uncommon diseases, including blindness, respiratory problems, and kidney disease, according to one of the testimony-givers.
However, the people of the Niger Delta aren’t asking for charity or pity; they are determined to fight for justice and see Shell restore the land it has devastated. In the light of that, Shell’s announcement of divesting from operations in the Niger Delta is seen as inadequate by community members. They view it as an attempt to evade responsibility for the damage caused over the years. After all, they pointed out, Shell would not be giving up on their business—they would be simply selling their assets to someone else.
The judges stressed the need to establish infrastructure for a reparative justice process to achieve true reparation for affected communities. They also called for Shell and Total Energy to halt all plans for expanding existing fossil fuel extraction sites, implement a permanent moratorium on exploring new sites, and cease supporting violence against communities through military, paramilitary groups, or private security forces.
In order to achieve that, it is necessary to constantly bear witness about the destruction caused by extractive corporations. By doing that, the people who spoke about their experiences during the People’s Health Tribunal showed extreme courage and deserved respect, said Nnimmo Bassey. “Staying alive and speaking out is the best we can do,” he said.
People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by thePeople’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, clickhere.
People take part in a protest against the military offensive led by Libyan National Army commander Khalifa Haftar, at Martyrs’ Square in Tripoli, Libya, on May 17, 2019 / credit: Xinhua/Amru Salahuddien
Editor’s Note: The following opinion was first published in Black Agenda Report.
If U.S. imperialism could only be said to be one thing, it is audacious. Recently U.S. rulers have been making a fuss over Russian troops on their own border with Ukraine, while 1,000 U.S. National Guard soldiers were deployed to the Horn of Africa, in countries where the U.S. shares no borders and is actually more than 7,396 miles away.
Ever since its government was destroyed in 2011 in the first operation of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), Libya has been the quintessential victim of U.S. audacity in Africa. Now, led by the United States, Western officials have been talking up a UN-led peace process in Libya that insists on “inclusive” and “credible” elections starting on December 24, despite serious disputes over how they should be held.
Of course the Libyan people should have the right to decide their leaders, forms of government, and politics. In fact, however, it is extremely difficult to see through the murk created by the inhumanity of the U.S.-EU-NATO axis of domination.
But what sort of process for nominating candidates are the Libyan people able to exercise? How credible and inclusive can an election be that is cast in the midst of a civil war and with the United States presiding over the country’s affairs like a Godfather?
The imperialist structure responsible for leading the overthrow of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya , AFRICOM, just backed the election efforts of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Richard Norland. This was after Norland took to Twitter to scold those discrediting the elections saying, “We call on all parties to de-escalate tensions and to respect the Libyan-led, legal, and administrative electoral processes underway.”
For these emissaries of empire, such statements are mere words of formality, empty rhetoric meant to minimize the glare of the contradiction: they created a failed state.
Reports have surfaced about the likely re-emergence of violence which has been on pause during a very fragile ceasefire. There have been stolen voter cards , an allegedly politically motivated disqualification of 25 of the 98 presidential hopefuls by the election commission, a chaotic appeals process, and, of course, a delay in the final list of candidates.
Then there were also the road blocks by gunmen backing eastern military chief and former CIA operative Khalifa Haftar to prevent travel to a court in the southern city of Sebha set to examine the appeal by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi to run for president. It is no surprise that Haftar himself is also a presidential candidate.
Initially Saif al-Islam, son of the murdered Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, was being excluded from a bid for presidency by the High Elections Commission. Before a Libyan court ruled on December 2 that Gaddafi can run for president, the case had endured an armed attack on the Sebha Court of Appeals followed by a protest in front of the Sebha Court at the end of November, organized by the people of the city of Ghat against the closure of the court by force.
The protesters, in support of Saif Gaddafi, demanding free and fair elections, and an impartial judiciary said, “…there are those who want to occupy the country and restore colonialism again, and who threaten to divide the country according to the interests of the international powers.”
Black and Brown people of the Global South know full well about what the protesters from Ghat are protesting. The capitalist, white surpremacist order has to disparage people-centered projects and legitimize anything in the interest of racist neoliberalism.
Some of the most transparent and participatory elections in the world, in Nicaragua and Venezuela, are denounced and demonized by the same international powers, its institutional extensions like the OAS, and its corporate media mouthpieces. Beneath that newswire is the irony of a Libya literally destroyed by the same forces. Now, ten years later, it is being forced into a largely illegitimate process.
The title “dictator” is bandied around for all leaders not compliant to Western interests, as was commonly done to the late Muammar Gaddafi. A common sense question one might ask is: Why go through such lengths to prevent the candidacy of the son of a dictator supposedly intent on reestablishing his father’s dynasty?
Once the non-white working class inside the belly of the beast realize that the United States is an undemocratic oligarchy that cannot pretend to offer, to the rest of the world, a nonexistent “democracy,” then it will begin to see that the internationalist fight to support the people of Libya is the same as the domestic fight to liberate those struggling for justice.
Attendees of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) Plenary 2017. In the front row includes recently indicted defendants Gazi Kodzo (first from left with fist on chest) and Omali Yeshitela (third from left with red beret) / credit: The Burning Spear
Activists on the left, as well as radical U.S.-based organizations, came out yesterday against the indictments of three members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), one former party member, and three Russian nationals for allegedly attempting to sow discord in the United States by working with Russia.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday, April 18, that a federal grand jury returned a “superseding indictment” charging the four people with:
…working on behalf of the Russian government and in conjunction with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to conduct a multi-year foreign malign influence campaign in the United States. Among other conduct, the superseding indictment alleges that the Russian defendants recruited, funded and directed U.S. political groups to act as unregistered illegal agents of the Russian government and sow discord and spread pro-Russian propaganda; the indicted intelligence officers, in particular, participated in covertly funding and directing candidates for local office within the United States.
The four charged include:
Omali Yeshitela, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and St. Louis, Missouri, who serves as the chairman and founder of the APSP;
Penny Joanne Hess, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and St. Louis, Missouri, who is chairperson of the African People’s Solidarity Committee;
Jesse Nevel, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and St. Louis, Missouri, who is chair of the APSP’s Uhuru Solidarity Movement; and
Augustus C. Romain Jr., aka Gazi Kodzo, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Atlanta, who once served as secretary-general of the APSP and is a founder of the Black Hammer Organization in Georgia.
Repressing Africans in Struggle
Hess and Nevel are white solidarity members. Nevertheless, that an African organization was targeted has raised concerns.
Anti-imperialist African organization Black Alliance for Peace yesterday issued a statement pointing to the U.S. government’s history of repressing the African liberation struggle:
Not since the Palmer Raids of the early 20th century, nor since the indictment of W.E.B DuBois in 1951, or the confiscation of Paul Robeson’s U.S. passport during the anti-communist “McCarthyist” era, has there been such a hysterical response to African people asserting their rights and freedom of speech in the United States. This renewed attack against anti-imperialist Africans, framed within the absurd notion of “Russian influence,” comes as capitalism decays and U.S. global hegemony loses its hold on the world. The attacks on the APSP and the Uhuru Movement are part of a historical tendency to align African political activists with U.S. “adversary” states to marginalize African internationalism (including solidarity with Cuba and Palestine, for example) and to suppress Black radicalism.
It is also an assault on the efforts of Africans organizing against the violence and murders suffered at the hands of the U.S. state. Indeed, Africans do not need Russia to tell them they are suffering the brunt of violence in the heart of the U.S. empire!
Wayne State University professor Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly noted her forthcoming book, Black Scare/Red Scare, points to the APSP raid of July 2022 to draw the connection between U.S. domestic anti-communist purges of the past and repression of activists today.
“It is no coincidence that an African socialist organization is being targeted,” she tweeted.
US charges 4 Americans, 3 Russians in election discord case
I start the epilogue of Black Scare/Red Scare with this case to discuss the resonances of those scares today. It is no coincidence that an African socialist organization is being targeted. https://t.co/SnVgP94m3N
The DOJ attempted to connect the charged activists with a Russian conspiracy to interfere in U.S. elections, beginning with the 2016 election of Trump.
“Russia’s foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights—freedoms Russia denies its own citizens—to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the DOJ’s National Security Division.
However, much evidence exists to show the United States interferes the most in other countries’ elections and democratic processes. Aside from invading 201 countries since the end of World War II, the United States deployed 64 covert operations to subvert governments around the world between 1947 and 1989, according to political scientist Lindsey O’Rourke. Meanwhile, political scientist Dov Levin’s work found the United States interfered in 81 elections between 1946 and 2000.
Attacking Activists
The APSP had been preparing for this moment since late December, when they received “strong indications” of indictments coming down in early 2023 after the FBI had raided the party’s properties in July 2022, as Toward Freedom had reported. Then the APSP announced last month that Regions Bank, a financial institution in the U.S. South, had closed the party’s accounts and withdrawn lines of credit. The APSP referred to that move as “U.S. economic sanctions” on Black community projects.
Freedom Road Socialist Organization also issued a statement that referred to more recent history of repression.
On September 24, 2010, the FBI raided seven homes of anti-war activists and the office of the Twin Cities Anti-War committee. All told, twenty-three activists were subpoenaed to a Chicago-based grand jury that claimed to be investigating “material support for terrorism.” As time went on, the FBI continued their attack on anti-war and international solidarity activists by targeting important veterans of the movement who worked with the Anti-war 23, including Chicano activist Carlos Montes in Los Angeles and Palestinian organizer Rasmea Odeh in Chicago. A national defense campaign defeated most of these attacks.
Toward Freedom Board Secretary and independent journalist Jacqueline Luqman commented on the danger for all activists who oppose U.S. global hegemony.
“Today it’s the APSP. Tomorrow it could be you and me,” she tweeted. “All you need to do is oppose US imperialist policy in Ukraine and Palmer Raids 2023 will be unleashed to silence you.”
Today it's the APSP. Tomorrow it could be you and me. All you need to do is oppose US imperialist policy in Ukraine and the Palmer Raids 2023 will be unleashed to silence you. #NoCompromiseNoRetreathttps://t.co/E9qb3pQz1F
