"Environments of Oppression" --Mumia's Message to the Celebration of the International Day for the Victims of Slavery in Paris on March 27, 2021 (About Keziah Nuissier; Introduction by Julia Wright)

(Photo of Keziah Nuissier)

Mumia's Message to the Celebration of the International Day for the Victims of Slavery in Paris on March 27, 2021

Introduction to Mumia Abu-Jamal's recorded message was written by Julia Wright

(Listen to Mumia's message, entitled Environments of "Oppression")

(Read the Spanish language translation)

Knowing that during that day homage would be given to slavery victims past and present - including victims of post-George Floyd police racism and brutality in Europe and the rising scandal of the eco-genocide in the french caribbean islands - I decided to reach out to Mumia in the hope that his words could weigh on the organic synergy binding our panafrican struggles. Also I knew that the ordeal of young Keziah who is preparing a BA in English would speak to him.

On July 16 2021 in Fort de France, the capital of the french colony of Martinique, a 22 year old brother called Keziah Nuissier was playing his ancestral drum during a peaceful picket protesting the arrest of a group of eco-freedom fighters who had opposed the use of a cancer-inducing pesticide called "chlordecone."

Chlordecone has long been forbidden in the United States and in France as a carcinogenic. Meanwhile its use in the french colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique to enhance the profits from export crops has given rise to an ecological struggle against what is defined as "genocide" since 91% of the island's population is now contaminated and the resulting cancers target the prostate and the womb.

On that July day, Keziah was arrested when he tried to protect his mother from the racist brutality of the "gendarmes" (the french militarized police). After a savage beating, he was dragged behind a police van and tortured. When the gendarmes realized they were being filmed they undertook to spray the pavement to clean the blood, leaving the young man to bleed out in a corner. He survived but with severe psychological scars and has become the figure head of an unprecedented revolutionary movement.

As is so often the case, the victim himself was criminalized and now Keziah is being charged with police assault. The Prosecution meanwhile wishes to displace Keziah's trial to Paris under the pretext that the defense lawyers constitute "a physical threat" to them.

Frantz Fanon's iconic book, "The Wretched of the Earth,” comes to mind. What would the native son of Martinique say today about the damned of his poisoned earth?

--Johanna Fernandez and Julia Wright teamed up to bring this message from Mumia to you.

Environments of Oppression

By Mumia Abu-Jamal

(March 29, 2021)

 

I join you all from the american State of Mass Incarceration, a state of poverty, oppression, environmental racism, police violence and governmental repression : it is not unlike what is happening to Brother Keziah in Paris -- governmental repression against dissent.

 

Generations ago, the american civil rights movement was born by the brutal torture and drowning of a teenage boy, Emmett Till.

 

Today, a global human rights movement was born from the slow motion brutality of police violence against a man, George Floyd, who died in his forties. George Floyd ... He died by a knee on his neck. From a teenager to a man in his forties, the repression is the same, the racial hatred is the same, the deadly result is the same.

 

What is a human right without the right to life?

 

We're asking that question throughout the black world, sparked by George Floyd, but it didn't begin there, it cannot end there.

 

In an age of global pandemic, black and brown people are the first to get sick, the first to get fired and the most to die from COVID-19 and also the last to get medical treatment , the last to get vaccines.

Where's the human rights there?

 

That question may be asked in the black world entire.

 

We join you in this day of resistance against slavery in all its forms, against the black world, and one of its greatest avatars, Frantz Fanon who wrote and worked and lived for the wretched of the earth.

 

For Keziah!

 

Free Keziah!

 

From the Prison-Nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.