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    The FBI wants to put me on trial for fighting for black freedom. Put the colonial state on trial! Archived Message

    Posted by sashimi on January 3, 2023, 10:59 am

    - We will win!

    Chairman Omali Yeshitela, 31 December 2022

    (quote)
    There are strong indications that in early 2023, I, Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of
    the African People's Socialist Party (APSP), founder of the Uhuru ("Freedom")
    Movement, will be indicted, along with other Uhuru leaders and members, by the
    federal government of the United States.

    Using the bogus and slanderous charge that we are "Russian agents," the
    U.S. government and its "Department of Justice" will attempt to put us on trial
    and imprison us for fighting for the liberation of African people in the
    U.S. and around the world.

    But they will fail. We will win.

    I am 81 years old. My political work for the last 60 years or so is influenced
    by the fact that in my entire life, nearing 100 years, I have not known a single
    day when my people were not experiencing oppression, exploitation and
    humiliation. For most of my life, I have worked to build the movement for
    freedom for black people in the U.S. and around the world, most significantly
    beginning with my work as an organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
    Committee in the 1960s.

    Since 1972 I have organized and led the African People's Socialist Party and the
    Uhuru Movement, a worldwide organization fighting for the self-determination of
    African people everywhere. Our organizational presence extends to nearly every
    continent. We exist throughout the U.S., Europe, the U.K., Africa and the
    Caribbean.

    Our Party presides over more than 50 institutions of economic development and
    self-reliance for the African community including numerous projects in north
    St. Louis, Missouri known as the Black Power Blueprint.

    On July 29 of 2022, the FBI violently and militarily raided my home in north
    St. Louis, Missouri where I live with my wife, the Deputy Chair of the African
    People's Socialist Party, Ona Zené Yeshitela, along with six other homes and
    offices of Uhuru Movement leaders.

    Now the U.S. government is attempting to discredit our righteous struggle to
    free our people from the perpetual immiseration we face in this country stemming
    from America's unresolved "original sin" of slavery and colonialism, a sin whose
    existence was given testimony by U.S. president Joseph Biden on December 15 of
    this year.

    Their "case" against us is baseless and ridiculous. Our case against them is
    backed by an undeniable history of centuries of ongoing atrocities against our
    people and our movement by the U.S. government, who have often used the FBI and
    Department of Justice as their political weapons against us.

    When they put us on trial, we will put them on trial.

    The U.S. government must be made to explain this attack on us in light of the
    well-known history of COINTELPRO and other covert and overt acts of
    surveillance, harassment, imprisonment and/or assassination of leaders such as
    Martin Luther King, Jr., Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Fred
    Hampton and many others.

    The U.S. is attempting to hide this blatant attack on black people by saying
    that it is an attack on Russia, not the African Liberation Movement.

    How will they defend this absurd notion against the overwhelming evidence of the
    criminal colonial assaults by the FBI and Justice Department against African
    people historically, often using the specter of "the Russians" or "the
    Communists" as their legal cover?

    This case is not about whether or not I went to Russia, or whether or not I have
    a position around the war in Ukraine that was the same as what the Russians
    had. This attack was perpetrated against us because we have always fought for
    the liberation of Africa and African people everywhere.

    The legal statutes the U.S. will use to execute this political attack will
    include the so-called "Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)," which they also
    used in 1951 to construct their indictment of W.E.B. DuBois on nearly identical
    charges of working for "the Russians."

    This is selective prosecution. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and
    other Israeli lobbying organizations are seemingly immune from prosecution under
    the FARA law despite their obvious public function as agents of the Israeli
    government. The "Foreign Agents Registration Act" is almost never enforced
    unless it is used as a tool against Africans and other colonized peoples.

    We will raise up our supposed legal rights to freedom of speech, freedom of
    association and freedom of assembly, but more importantly, the government must
    be made to answer for their oppression and terror against black people
    historically.

    Beginning in the 1970s, our Party laid out a strategic approach to winning the
    freedom for black people that included building relationships with people all
    around the world to support the struggle for African self-determination in the
    U.S.

    At our First Party Congress held in Oakland, California in 1981, we received
    solidarity statements from organizations and governments from around the world,
    including FECOPES in Colombia, Casa El Salvador, the Pan African Congress of
    Azania (South Africa), the FSLN government from Nicaragua, the New Jewel
    Movement-led government of Grenada, Casa Chile, the Revolutionary Workers' Party
    of Argentina, the Association of Vietnamese Patriots in the U.S., and the
    National United Movement of Barbados.

    This helps to give lie to the notion that our connection to a Russian NGO is
    evidence of an illicit relationship that we would have with a "foreign" power.

    I traveled to Ireland more than 40 years ago to meet with the Irish Republican
    Socialist Party (IRSP) at a time when the Irish people were engaged in a
    struggle for their independence from British colonialism.

    In 1983 The Burning Spear newspaper published an article covering how we won the
    Irish Republican Socialist Party to support our demand for reparations. They
    held a press conference with us in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The IRSP came out
    and said that they didn't want any monetary donations from any Irish people in
    America who were not supporting the liberation struggle of black people in the
    U.S.

    Our Party has a half-century long historical trajectory that precedes anything
    that the U.S. government is talking about now in terms of Russia. I was in
    Nicaragua representing black people after the Nicaraguan Revolution, based on
    our relationship with the Sandinista National Liberation Front with whom we
    worked closely in San Francisco leading up to their victory in 1979.

    In 1982 we held the first World Tribunal for Reparations for Black People in
    history. We indicted the U.S. government based on international law and the
    right of an oppressed people to wield our own state power.

    One aspect of the international law used for the Reparations Tribunal was the
    question of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
    the Crime of Genocide.

    An international panel of judges ruled at the end of two days of testimony that
    the United States is guilty of genocide against African people. It took another
    40 years for the United States to ratify this genocide convention, and only in a
    fashion that freed itself from any possible trial or repercussions.

    The reason the U.S. wouldn't ratify the Genocide Convention was because they
    wanted to evade responsibility for their treatment of the colonized African and
    Indigenous peoples in this country.

    The U.S. government and the FBI's attacks on the Uhuru Movement did not begin in
    2022. It goes back decades.
    (/quote)
    -- Cont'd at https://handsoffuhuru.org/the-fbi-wants-to-put-me-on-trial-for-fighting-for-black-freedom-put-the-colonial-state-on-trial-we-will-win/

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