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Neo-Slavery, No Borders and Anarcho-Racism

By N, 14 December 2006

 

STILL IN CHAINS!

The year 2007's commemoration of the bicentenary of the parliamentary abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in the British Empire is an insult to the Africans who continue to be virtually in chains as slaves of Europe and the West, and physically in shackles across British and European detention camps built specifically for the foreigner and making millions of profits for multinationals. Deja-vu!

It is well known that Western powers committed numerous crimes, including the slave trade, in their exploitation of Africa. They also gradually moulded African countries into their material suppliers and product-dumping markets, which resulted in abnormal economic structures in many African countries with deleterious effects. What is more, they introduced divide-and-rule tactics to Africa, which created ethnic conflicts, incited religious dissent, and provoked religious conflicts, thereby undermining the traditional African social and economic order.

In history, slaves were stolen, snatched or bought, forces into boats - some killed on the journeys -, and taken from their lands, to work in forced labour as their European masters' slaves, for the rest of their lives. Their children were born slaves. After the scramble for Africa, the British empire and other European colonialists enslaved Africans in their own lands, and even after granting the newly-divided African states 'independence', the chains remain in form of treaties, contracts and laws entered into, immediately before the colonialists' departure, in order to continue milking Africa of its resources; donor 'aid' in form of exorbitant high interest loans.

Development funds in form of donor 'aid' are multi-accounted for, with 'reform' demands attached for public corporations and utilities, as IMF and the World Bank conditions cripple Africa; trade injustices and imbalances, and European product dumping – making it impossible for Africans to compete; outright exploitation and disregard to human rights and environment when it comes to the the West's demand for Africa's resources; outright theft in form of 'patents' of Africa's indigenous medicines and herbs, then demands of exorbitant prices for lifesaving pharmaceutical products made from those resources; 'brain drain' of Africa's academics and professionals attracted by Europe's economies, to escape poverty; turning a blind eye on African leaders who squander and stash stolen billions of Africa's wealth, never to be returned after their demise or defeat; arms trades that fuel Africa's conflicts and cause deaths, suffering, displacement , refugees and asylum seekers. As a result, African countries have been in a poor and backward state since they were granted independence. Even today, Western multinational corporations manipulate those industries that are of utmost importance to African countries’ economies such as heavy industry, mining and manufacturing.

This time around, for mostly young Africans fighting for survival, the clock of slavery has turned back. The corrupt African Leaders have taken the role of slave trader, as their greed for personal wealth and power drives them. Just like the triangular trade that began in the 16th Century, which involved; first the European traders selling guns and gun powder to the leaders and Chiefs of African villages encouraging them to make war against each other, so the practice continues in a more systematic, 'legal' and sophisticated manner, and the arms trade provide huge profits for the UK and EU states. Second, with the confusion of war, conflicts and greed of power and wealth, and unscrupulous deals, the Africans' wealth is robbed. The same way Africans were forced into boats to be transported to the Americas as slaves for the rest of their lives, this time around Africans are forced into backs of lorries, boats etc., to Europe, in their fight for survival – to escape conflicts; fight for justice and equality; persecution – often because of speaking out against these injustices –; and poverty. The African is also chained by globalist policies, multi-corporations, IMF conditions, 'debts' owed to the World Bank and Western 'donors' such as the U.K. The third part of the triangle is completed when Africa's 'stolen' wealth is brought to Europe and the West by the EU states and companies – in form of profit, and in a more sophisticated way, with British and European detention camps being built and expanded specifically for the African and Asian foreigner, making millions of profits for multinationals and their shareholders.

The African who succeeds to make through all the hurdles and 'assault course' against all odds to the shores of Fortress Europe to claim political asylum is then shackled on arrival. The criminalization of immigrants seeking political asylum reflects a trend by governments of industrialized nations. These nations are increasingly demanding that asylum seekers have complete documents from their home governments – who are often the persecutors – in order to enter without being imprisoned. It occurs at a time when there is a growing number of refugees and asylum seekers fleeing torture and other human right abuses.

Throughout the UK, approximately 2,500 asylum seekers (including children) are estimated to be held in detention, at any one time. One of the largest concentrations of detained asylum seekers in the UK is near Heathrow airport (Harmondsworth and Colnbrook detention centres), where, at any given time, approximately 800 individuals are detained in two UK Immigration Detention contract facilities, and an unknown number of individuals are detained in prisons. Bail and release rates and length of detention among asylum seekers arriving without proper documentation in the UK, and those deemed to be suitable for 'Fast-Track' of their asylum claims as well as 'failed' asylum seekers are few and far between.

The practice of detaining asylum seekers in the UK and other nations has greatly concerned health professionals and human rights advocates, in part because of the potential detrimental effects of detention on the mental health of asylum seekers. Many asylum seekers have suffered trauma, such as torture, prior to immigration, which contributes to high rates of psychiatric morbidity in this population. Detention may exacerbate prior symptoms or even foster development of new problems. The practice of imprisoning asylum seekers who flee to Europe to escape torture, abuse, and persecution in their own countries has damaging effects on the well-being of these individuals. Detention can induce fear, isolation and hopelessness, and exacerbate the severe psychological distress frequently exhibited by asylum seekers who are already traumatized.

Detention of asylum seekers and migrants is an evil policy and should be abolished. There is no limit to detention and no independent review of that decision. Terrorist suspects are better treated, as they can only be held for a maximum of 28 days without charge. Asylum seekers are guilty of seeking asylum and can be held at detention centres for months and years. Since 1994, there has been 7182 documented refugee deaths through Fortress Europe, and the number keeps rising. In UK detention centres, self harm and attempted suicides are common a daily occurrence. Since 1989, there has been 71 suicides of asylum seekers and foreign nationals. 36 suicides of asylum seekers and foreign nationals in prisons, detention centres and psychiatric custody. In the last five years, alone, there have been 41 suicides – 15 in detention and 26 in the community. In the same period, 21 people have died as a result of using dangerous and risky methods to enter the country.

The legacies of enslavement and colonialism continue today, both in Africa and in the UK and the west. In Kenya for example, the Mau Mau rebellion against British rule during the 1950s was led in part by Kenyans who served under the British flag in the second world war and returned trained to fight and with a burning sense of grievance at colonial rule. The organisation was dominated by the Kikuyu who had suffered more than most Kenyans from the land grabbing by white settlers. The Mau Mau's killing of settlers, including women and children, at the end of 1952 and early 1953 led to its vilification in Britain as a group of savages and terrorists.

But Britain's response proved no less barbaric. Its forces killed thousands of Africans, and imprisoned tens of thousands, before the end of the rebellion in 1959. Britain also hanged about 1,000 people as rebels although many of them never bore arms. The government put the final death toll at 11,000 Kenyans compared with 32 white settlers and about 200 soldiers and police. Recent research suggests up to 100,000 Kenyans died, many through torture, starvation and neglect in the British prison camps. The Mau Mau killed more than 2,000 Africans they accused of collaboration.

During the seven years after Britain declared the 'Kenya emergency' in 1952, accounts of rape, systematic and prolonged beatings and other physical tortures that caused permanent injury and starvation as part of a British policy to break the rebellion are documented. Some of the former detainees describe rape and sexual abuse of women; others say they survived camps where inmates were flogged, worked to death, murdered in cold blood or starved. A group of surviving victims now want compensation but also an apology for what they describe as a system of organised brutality unmatched anywhere else in the waning years of the British empire. Even in the 1950s, the camps were described as 'Kenya's gulags' and likened by officials to Nazi slave labour camps. 50 years from now, what will be said about UK and the west's detention policies aimed at people of the 'third world'? I can bet it will come to haunt the British, the Europeans and the west as much as slavery has since its 'abolition'.

The camps were justified, in British eyes, by the Mau Mau's butchering of 32 white settlers and African chiefs loyal to the crown early in the rebellion. The Mau Mau were dominated by the Kikuyu, the largest ethnic group in Kenya, and were largely driven by bitterness at the loss of land to the white settlers. But the struggle also divided the tribe, and the Mau Mau ultimately killed far more fellow Kikuyu than whites, with massacres such as the killing of 120 men, women and children at Lari in March 1953. In Britain the Mau Mau were portrayed as representing the re-emergence of a primitive bloodlust that the twin benefits of colonisation - Christianity and civilisation - were intended to eradicate. But the British soon proved they could be as brutal as their enemies.

The Kenyan Human Rights Commission, which is backing the former prisoners' legal claim, says about 160,000 people were detained in dire conditions and that tens of thousands were tortured to get them to renounce their oath to the Mau Mau. Britain set up the camps in response to the brutal killings of white settlers, including women and children. After the emergency was lifted in 1961, an official report determined that 32 whites had been killed by the insurgency while more than 11,000 Africans died, many of them civilians. Others put the death toll much higher. Lawyers for the claimants are likely to call as a witness a US academic, Caroline Elkins, whose acclaimed book, Britain's Gulag, estimates that up to 100,000 Kenyans died of torture, abuse and neglect in the British camps. The British authorities also hanged hundreds of Mau Mau members for offences other than killing, such as illegal possession of arms or associating with people illegally carrying weapons.

In Britain and Europe, the legacies of enslavement and colonialism continue not only from the wealth gained from resources from Africa through 'neo-colonialism', but also by 'neo-slavery' right in European soil, by the detention of asylum seekers and migrants, as well as exorbitant visa extension fees for short-term migrants such as students and foreign workers. Multinational corporations are making lucrative profits for their shareholders, while the UK taxpayer for example pays for the costs of depriving the asylum seeker and migrant of their fundamental freedom. It costs £1,230 per detainee per week in detention excluding overheads such as failed removals, medical care, transfer and escorting costs and cancelled flights.

The British colonial legacy has also left behind a bitter struggle among nationals, through the part played in suppressing the Mau Mau by some Kenyans who went on to hold senior posts in government (many still in powerful positions in government and business). This has left fertile ground for organisations like Mungiki to flourish, some of whose ideology stems from the Mau Mau, as an organised collective against those in power who perhaps maintain some of the old colonial, imperialist, attitudes. It is just sad that they have to incorporate violence into the movement and thus attract more violence from the security forces, creating a vicious circle!

George Mwangi + other sources
georgemwas AT yahoo.com

27th October 2006

  • Plight of Asylum seekers and Forced Migrants in UK Public Meeting. 6pm - 9pm Friday, 27 October, Rupert Beckett Lecture Theatre, University of Leeds
  • See also: Colnbrook Detainees Forum

 

SMASH PSYCHIC SLAVERY OF ANARCHO RACISM

We, therefore, need to formulate and reformulate state inquiries through radically different vocabularies, and in different dimensionalities in terms of the state as a force, a subject and as an entity in the overlapping fields of history as 'fields of struggle'. And since this would involve constant power struggles, state’s identities, meanings, and images remain incessantly contested – always in a constant state of flux. That is one of the ways the state will maintain certain viability (ibid.:). History and the skills of statecraft must be seen as multiple fields of syncretic activities. The sovereign state must be reconceptualized as being produced in a 'polyhedron' of fields of activity of relations.

John Moffat Fugui

George Mwangi's text 'Still in Chains!' fulfils an important role in begining to trace the development of slavery into colonialism and onwards into what we now face, i.e. wage slavery. I refer to a text by John Moffat Fugui, which critiques the 'sovereign state' as a development of colonialism and includes a critique of nationalism as deriving from a myth of 'independence'. (It also refers to the book State and Strangers: Refugees and Displacement of Statecraft by Nevi Soguk.) Another strength of this text is that it stresses the need to priviledge those discourses and cultures which have been eroded and attacked by Eurocentrism and colonialism.

The problems we have with that text as well as with 'Still In Chains' is the polarisation between 'foreign' and 'native', which continues through constructions such as 'black/white' 'east/west'. These become inprecise, interchangable and open to manipulation.

We have therefore put forward a critique of this polarising and imperial effect of what we term as 'psychopathic geometry'. We draw from the Scandinavian situationism of Asger jorn. Scandinavian situationism, operating in the 1960s, rather than being a nationalistic construction, it should be noted, works against European hegemony – i.e. against a Eurocentric perspective, within what is conventionally received as 'Europe' itself – i.e. Paris.

We have, along with this, used the ideas of Hindu Islamic 'yogic telepathy' (as laid out by Agha Ashraf in his book Complete Telepathy, published in urdu in Lahore, Punjab) to create a notion of semantic (or social) space. Against psychopathic geometry, this book posits a telepathic psychogeometry based on yoga and the concepts of 'wahad' or unique one point of thought and 'kathir' or many/fragmented thought.

Thus we have put forward a triolectic dimensionality of space, time and meaning. We agree with the fact that while spatial or physical chains may be removed, temporal and semantic chains are still in place. We are bound within spaces, such as detention centres, but also in time, such as in events which may include temporal constructions like debt, as well as being trapped within social or semantic spaces of constructed meaning such as racism (including spaces of subliminal or institutional racism like, for example the No Borders Network).

 

Neo-Slavery, No Borders and Anarcho-Racism

How could so many people have been so stupid as to cause in Kenya the explosion we called the Emergency? Why even now do the British haver and dither apparently creating a similar situatrion in Rhodesia? These are the big problems only those who really understand the complex origins of political manoeuvers can begin to fathom. But there are the smaller questions. What turns a weak creature into a sadistic bully behind a barbed wire fence? What strange twists of thought made the security forces think they always had God and Right on their side whatever crimes against humanity they committed? What obstinate streak in their make-up forced experienced and hitherto reasonably righteous administrative officers to pursue policies of torture and brutality leading to the Hola Massacre? How could the Kenya Government ever think it could permanently exile 12,000 of its citizens? The future historian of these times may well find it difficult to get our side of the story. Many documents vital to his task will be burnt before independence. But in my narrative of the camps and our strange life together inside them he perhaps will see some glimpses of the truth and justice of the movements of unity, and he may begin to understand why we do not regard the soldiers of the forest as 'hard-core', 'terrorists', or 'murderers', but as the noblest of our fighters for freedom.

Conclusion to Mau-Mau Detainee by Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, London, OUP 1963

My message titled SMASH PSYCHIC SLAVERY OF ANARCHO RACISTS was infact a reply to George Mawangi of the Colnbrook Detainee Forums speech to Leeds No Borders, entitled STILL IN CHAINS!

I would again like to refer to that speech, and highlight the concluding condemnation of the 'incorporation of violence in the movement'.

In Fabian's reply to Greg, below, he also mentions the violence of the Anarcho-Racists, although not in such terms. I would like to draw this out and remind people that after we were expelled as members of Voice Forum, despite other Forum members protests, not only were we both physically attacked with an iron bar and broken bottles, and Fabian and another African member of Voice racially abused for their African ancestry, by LARC Anarcho-Racists. Gaston from Voice has also been repeatedly abused – having a computer stolen – and then, after being told he cannot be a Director of LARC, because he is a refugee, eventually, the Voice Forum was fully hounded out of LARC.

I would also stress that Anarcho-Racism is charecterised by a confusion of the personal and the political realms. Like other racists and chauvinists, the anarcho-racist imagines inferiority within himself which he denies and projects onto the other. However, the anarcho-racist, instead of creating the myth of the nation or race, he creates the myth of the Anarchist: the ideal individual. In the ever-decreasing circles of Greg, Alesio, Mark Brown etc, this is the self – increasingly identified as Western European – simultaneously repressing the undesirable aspects of their own personality and projecting them onto the imagined 'other' (the slave who needs liberating by the anarcho-master). This process is exacerbated by the psychic Bakuninism that Anarcho-Racism is based on, which creates the Anarchist as a secret vanguard of the personality. This is why, rather than discuss issues, these people have to expel us as the 'other' – they have an irrational fear of the truth. It is shocking to them that their image of themselves is different from reality – this is the essence of denial and of the violence it engenders.

We, however, are precise in both theory and practice, and see both of these in a unified communist praxis, which we seek to turn into conscious, deliberate, international revolutionary (proletarian) praxis. We have always made our criticisms upfront and to people's faces. This is why we write any criticisms of No Borders direct to the NoBo mailing list, and not to other discussion lists etc., as Ionek etc suggest we do.

Asim Butt, Solomon Islands, South Pacific, The Former British Empire

 

The Greg Ryan School of Falsification

I was sorry, but not surprised to see that Greg Ryan is up to his usual tricks of debasing the politics of those who disagree with him. This something he has been doing for sometime.

The problems that we encountered with Ryan and his chums at the London Action Resource Centre/London section of Peoples Global Action are not personal as he alleges, but quite clearly political. Ryan's efforts to dismiss them as 'personal' is common strategy implemented by those who wish to forestall a critique of their discriminatory practices.

The facts can readily be attested by those interested:

Asim and I were heavily involved in developing the London Action Resource Centre (LARC), and in 2004 became involved in preparations for the Peoples Global Action (PGA) conference scheduled for that year in Belgrade. One issue of disagreement which arose between us and Ryan and Co. was on whether having meetings from which women were banned was appropriate. We accepted the argument that as women are oppressed under the patriarchy which is a living reality in our society and hence their organisation without men was something to be encouraged. Yet we refused to accept the non sequitur that therefore there should also be men only meetings. Indeed, we furnished our viewpoint with political and historical parallels e.g. The advent of women only meetings during the struggle against slavery in the USA. For us, this gave very important lessons – of how the struggle against slavery had a positive effect on women's struggles, and how the depiction of the anti-slavery movement as a uniform movement belied the fact that it was heterogeneous movement, which included some reactionary tendencies that expressed both sexist and racist views. We also affirmed our conviction that racism is very much a product of patriarchy, whereby white men prohibited sexual relations between white women and black men, something which reached its psychotic climax with lynch mobs.

During the preparations for the conference, a preparatory meeting was held in London. Rather than deal with our arguments, Ryan and his PGA cronies simply organised meetings behind our back where our views were ignored despite a so-called commitment to consensus. This was also accompanied by attempts to restrict the conference to Europeans and highly offensive remarks by one Marco of the Eurodynsie collective in Holland, who said he would reject applications to attend from Africa as he considered them as bogus attempts to gain access to the EU. Unfortunately Ryan and co. did not take our protests about this seriously.

In the process of organising the conference we saw another face of our erstwhile comrades who we realised were expressing a neo-colonial attitude to our comrades in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia in particular. We found that our working class comrades were being excluded by Andrej Grubacic, an academic with ambitions to further his career outside Serbia. We analysed this as classical neo-colonialism and denounced it as such.

As it happens, when we got to Belgrade we were able to play a very positive role, ensuring that our Resnik comrades were not isolated and developing a relationship with the Anarcho-Syndicalist Initiative there, despite the manipulations of the PGA apparatus. We also published critical material in Mute Magazine (Artist's Project: Over the Resnik Horizon) further elaborating our politics. We missed the final plenum of the conference (we were visiting some striking miners that day instead), and read the minutes with great interest when they were published later that year. We were shocked to read that the meeting had decided that it was acceptable for members of fascist organisations to participate in PGA events, as long as they were not from the leadership or openly offensive. We we asked some people who attended the plenum about this. Instead of serious concern about a real issue, we were told that it was not important. Alessio Longhi was prominent amongst these people. We also saw how the PGA rumour mill functioned. We were told that the person taking the minutes didn't understand English. This blatant lie (the notes were in good English) also showed how as an organisation they were happy that people were excluded from the decision making process due to their limited English. We call this racism, we call this neocolonialism.

The response of LARC and the PGA London crowd – in which Ryan played a prominent part – was to organise a show trial for us. This was based in part by blaming us for some posting made to a wiki site by someone else, and because we had spoken out against the danger of fascist infiltration of the PGA particularly by New Right Duginists. The PGA rumour mill then went into full flood, reviving some smears by Larry O'Hara as regards a criticism of Green Anarchist magazine, which advocated the indiscriminate bombing of people on public transport back in the nineties. Ryan and Longhi played prominent parts in all of this. Yet despite their attempts to isolate Asim Butt and myself during the Dissent! process organising protests against the G8 in Gleneagles, this had little effect outside London, and indeed contributed to the isolation of the Dissent! London Assembly.

If the story stopped there it would be bad enough, but it gets worse. Yes, indeed, there had been fascist infiltration of the PGA. Working with comrades in Poland and Russia, we were able to uncover a certain Leonid Savin as the Ukrainian chairperson of the Duginist Eurasia Youth Organisation. However, we did not receive any sort of apology from LARC, London PGA or even Ryan himself, despite our concerns having been proven to be based in reality. All that happened was that I was attacked by one of Ryan's colleagues at LARC with an iron bar.

When Ryan suggests that none of this is political, just personal, he is belittling every time that someone has stood up against racism and fascism. How often has it been dismissed as issues of personality? How often have so-called 'illegal immigrants' been dismissed as individuals simply seeking to improve their personal circumstance, who can understandably be excluded by racist laws?

We have seen similar behaviour to Ryan's if we turn back the leaves of history. We all know how the Stalinist Communist Parties did an about face, abandoning their self-proclaimed position at the head of the anti-fascist movement only to cheerlead the Nazi-Soviet partition of Poland. Ryan, Longhi and their pals in the PGA apparatus are political manipulators of this ilk who should not be allowed to poison the No Borders Network.

We do not use the expression Anarcho-Racist without careful consideration.

Smash Psychic Slavery of Anarcho Racists. No Platform for Fascists.

Fabian Tompsett, 20 November 2006, Limehouse

 

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