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Political Ban on Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah

Germany’s Misuse of Migration Law for Authoritarian Purposes Must Stop

ELSC and ICJP (International Centre of Justice for Palestinians – a legal organisation based in London, working to uphold international law and defend the rights of Palestinians) aim to challenge the ban imposed by German authorities on political activity and public speaking of Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah in April 2024.

The European Legal Support Center (ELSC) has previously succeeded in overturning the ban on Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah’s entry to the Schengen-area, now the ELSC with support from the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) is challenging the ban on his public speaking in Germany which was imposed in April 2024.  

On 12 April 2024 the Berlin Immigration Office has banned Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah from participating, whether in person or online, at the “Palästina Kongress” which was planned to take place on the same day in Berlin. The ban also included participating or publicly speaking at any other events in relation to Palestine and the Gaza genocide. The Immigration Office threatened a prison sentence of up to one year for non-compliance. 

Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah is a multi-award-winning Plastic and Reconstructive surgeon. He arrived in Gaza on 9 October 2023 to volunteer with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). He remained in Gaza for 43 days, working at al-Ahli, al-Shifa, al-Awda hospitals. The Palästina Kongress organisers had invited him to share his testimony on the Gaza genocide. 
 
Justifying the ban, German authorities argued it was necessary because Abu-Sittah had publicly stated that Israel is attacking hospitals and committing genocide against the Palestinian people and that these statements threaten the German “free democratic basic order” and aren’t compatible with the “German reason of state (Staatsräson) to protect Israel”. This comes despite the International Court of Justice (ICJ) January 2024 finding that Israels’ acts in Gaza constitute a plausible genocide.  
 
The German Federal Police has also placed a Schengen-Information-System entry for Abu-Sittah, which has prevented him from entering Germany, France and the Netherlands. 
Immediately after the ban was placed, the ELSC supported by the ICJP took legal action against the decision arguing that: 

  • Abu-Sittah’s freedom of expression was violated; 
  • The statements he is accused of by the German authorities reflect his lived experience as a trauma surgeon at Palestinian hospitals in Gaza and are corroborated by United Nations reports. 

Following ELSC’s urgent appeal, the Administrative Court Potsdam ruled- in May 2024- that the Schengen ban has no legal basis and had to be revoked immediately. This effectively ended the Schengen-area travel ban imposed on Abu-Sittah by the German authorities.  

Now we will challenge the ban on public speaking in Germany in the upcoming trial at the Administrative Court Berlin. The trial will be ruled by a chamber decision (Kammerentscheidung), a judicial process including three judges rather than one. This process is assigned to trials that the German judiciary deems as having high public interest. 

This trial should be understood in the context of the crack-down on the Palästina Kongress in Berlin, where Abu-Sittah was supposed to speak. Palästina Kongress was planned as an assembly of Palestinian, Jewish, German and international voices calling for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Germany’s complicity in the genocide. It was ultimately prevented from taking place in an illegal attack by German authorities with heavy police presence. Germany’s Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) had openly pressured the Berlin police to “crack down hard” on the Congress, and Berlin’s Mayor Kai Wegener (CDU) declared: “It is intolerable that a so-called Palestine Congress will take place in Berlin”. 

ELSC Lawyer Alexander Gorski said: “Abu-Sittah’s participation as well as the Palästina Kongress itself were already banned by the German authorities. However, what we aim to achieve in court is a precedential ruling which prevents the German authorities from misusing sections of German migration law for authoritarian political purposes. We were successful in overturning the Schengen ban on Ghassan Abu-Sittah and I am optimistic that we can overturn the ban on political activities too.” 

An ICJP spokesperson said: “Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah continues to face harassment across the UK and Europe.  The ICJP will continue to defend him wherever this happens, so he can carry on doing his life-saving work in Gaza and Lebanon. It is draconian that this case even needs to be heard before a court, but we will fight to ensure that his free speech is upheld. It is cowardice from any state to ban someone from engaging in political activity simply because they highlight states’ complicity in Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.” 

The repression of Palestine solidarity in Germany and across Europe is systematic and increasingly institutionalised. German state and non-state institutions conflate legitimate criticism of the Israeli state with antisemitism and/or support for terrorism and as such, use allegations of antisemitism to silence expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle for liberation. The ELSC’s Monitor and Research (M&R) Department documents and analyses the growing restrictions that are silencing civil society organisations and activists defending Palestinian rights across Europe and has recently presented the first publicly available database exposing anti-Palestinian repression in Germany. 

Emirati dreams for European teens

Is Europe edging towards the Gulf model of migration?

The British Labour Party’s recent lurch to adopt far-right migration policies should come as no surprise to anyone with even a passing familiarity with contemporary Western politics. Some of Keir Starmer’s proposed changes include the gradual abolition of family visas, the hobbling of the post-study work period, and a doubling of the period it would take to qualify for permanent residence. Exceptions to this appear to apply to migrants working in nursing, or — in very characteristic British haplessness — artificial intelligence. These policies are mirrored across the pond, with Trump’s attempts to clamp down on birthright citizenship and the issuance of green cards. The waiting period for the latter already approaches multiple decades for citizens of India, China, and Mexico. In Germany, while it appears that the coalition will not make any hasty changes to most citizenship laws for now, the pressure from the right remains strong.

The Western world today enjoys a particularly high standard of living. There are many reasons for this, a central one being centuries of unhindered capitalist development. Colonialism served to offset the numerous crises that capitalism was prone to. The slave trade and the colonisation of the Americas helped kickstart primitive accumulation; the birth of massive settler-colonies helped offload Europe’s surplus populations; and finally, colonies in the global South acted as both a source of raw materials, and a destination for capitalism’s finished goods. This formal colonial period is now history, but one of its core mechanisms — the drain of value from the global South to the global North — has far from disappeared; it has simply mutated. Dependency and drain are maintained through the presence of the U.S. military, and through endless political interference; through the concentration of financial capital in the North; and through technological dominance, as technical know-how and legally enforced intellectual property barriers ensure that Northern firms occupy a comfortably extractive position in global supply chains. 

The maintenance of this system requires a diverse and flexible labour force, which the global North notably lacks. It requires “skilled” workers, ideally trained at someone else’s expense: scientists and researchers, web developers and computer programmers, engineers and designers, each playing a part in helping Northern firms redirect value from labour-intensive production in Bangladesh and China and Vietnam towards themselves. It also requires myriad forms of social reproductive labour to ensure that society keeps running — nurses, doctors, and bus drivers, to name a few. And finally, to plug the gaps in the market where profitable commodity production is simply impossible, it requires a continuous stream of unfree labour — visible in American prisons, Spanish and Italian farms, Romanian construction sites, Greek refugee camps, and so on.


On the face of it, today, the main outcome of capitalist crisis in the Western world, with its long legacy of racialisation, has been the birth of an ultra-nativist far-right. Their specific brand of politics, at its most extreme, aims to kick anyone who isn’t white out of Western civilisation’s claimed territories. Five minutes on Twitter/X is enough to witness multiple apoplectic Nazis screaming deport at black rappers taking a principled stance against genocide, or at South Asian politicians eating rice with their hands

What requires critical examination, however, is whether or not this is the only possible current that capitalist crisis can conceive in a racialised society; and the world outside Europe and the United States is rife with counterexamples. In South Africa or Brazil, for instance, racialised labour forms a buffer against general economic malaise. India’s stunning absence of social mobility speaks to its unique synthesis of caste and capitalism, entrenching existing hierarchies to serve dominant caste groups. These countries might struggle to produce computers or washing machines today; yet, they are able to counter this malaise by ensuring that their dominant social groups have access to a cheap and steady supply of nannies and cooks and cleaners, of chauffeurs and delivery workers and security guards. 

The most successful example of this labour pattern does not, however, lie in these middle-income countries that ultimately still struggle to keep the system running. It lies in a very specific set of oil-rich, high-income countries on the Arabian Peninsula: the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman.

Racialised labour in the Gulf is uniquely disposable, since it is made up entirely of migrants. Migrants make up the bulk of society in most of these countries: only 12% of the population of the UAE, for instance, is “native” Emiratis. While many of these countries are framed as paradise for Western, white-collar migrants, a precarious working-class forms a large chunk of this migrant population. For the overwhelming majority of these migrants, any form of permanent residence (let alone citizenship) is not an option that exists — no matter how many decades they have spent there. This precarity enables an almost uniquely brutal exploitation: and the slightest injury or incapacity to work can result in instant deportation, as can shifts in the broader economy that make workers redundant. This ability to deport at will has also effectively made labour movements in these countries non-existent: you are simply not going to strike for better conditions if doing so gets you put on the next flight back home (in the best case). The end result is a careless brutalisation of workers, perhaps the most striking example of which is the six thousand workers who died building a FIFA stadium in the sweltering Qatari sun. 

What makes this pattern of disposable racialised labour particularly pernicious is that it has immense global legitimacy, since it occurs almost entirely along the lines of citizenship. Marx’s oft-quoted passage on the opiate of the masses possibly applies far more to nationality today than it does to religion, with near-complete buy-in in most countries, rich or poor. The inalienable right of nation-states to discriminate between citizens and non-citizens also has near-complete buy-in; it is seen as a common-sense, “logical” function of a nation-state. The outcome is that no matter how much one might look askance at Dubai’s labour conditions, to argue that Dubai must grant Philippine nurses citizenship within ten years would be seen as going a shade too far for most people. The UAE is a sovereign country, after all, and the principles of non-interference in sovereign, domestic decisions have been around since the Peace of Westphalia. It would clearly be absurd for a Swede or a Brazilian or (god forbid) a Filipino to suggest that the UAE do things differently.


Going back to crisis — there is a fair bit of evidence that the Western world appears to be slowly edging towards implementing the Gulf model domestically. Sporadic approximations of this model already exist in Europe: Denmark, for instance, is the prototypical example of an anti-migrant social democracy. Danish naturalisation laws require nine years of uninterrupted residence in order to naturalise as a Danish citizen. Receiving unemployment benefits resets the timer, even though paying into the system is mandatory. Minor traffic violations place you in a four and a half year quarantine. In practice, these laws are constructed in ways that ensure that the only people who even stand a chance are the “high-skilled” workers contributing to Denmark’s rentier state. The Danish welfare state, after all, relies on taxing the profits made by high-tech pharmaceutical firms like Novo Nordisk, which subsist on rents attracted by their intellectual property assets; or Maersk, the logistic titan that was happy to make a quick buck off arming Israel’s genocide in Gaza until just last week. The much warmer Italy, with its fabled fresh Mediterranean produce, is a slightly different (yet broadly similar) example. Italian agriculture relies heavily on unfree labour, maintained precisely through the precarity created by migration law. Labour conditions have spawned horror stories, such as the recent incident of an Indian farmhand who, after suffering a workplace accident, was abandoned, and left to bleed to death. Less than a year later, an Italian referendum on easing citizenship requirements from ten years to five saw a turnout of only 30% — with only two-thirds of those voting in favour. The referendum did not get past quorum.

One can see why (variants of) this model are exceptionally well-suited to the West’s political economy today, particularly in Europe. As in the Gulf, making citizenship unattainable solves both issues with the labour question. The reserve army of labour, trying to join the ranks of the toiling masses, is sizable enough that many will accept these conditions. As for the labour aristocracy — necessary to ensure Western “competitiveness” over the rest of the world, particularly China — there’s always cold, hard cash. Further, there is no reason to believe that this approach wouldn’t quell far-right sentiment. It is entirely correct that the Danish Social Democrats have succeeded at quelling the far-right, despite rising migrant numbers. Many have pointed out that they have done so by adopting far-right policies; but “send them packing” and “make them sweat” are not the same policy, as abhorrent as both of them may be. AfD-style mobs may well fade into the background and dissipate when it is made clear that there will be no conceivable path for migrants to claim welfare, or to become citizens. It is far from unlikely, therefore, that this — rather than an explicitly expulsionist racism — is the direction in which Western capital’s decrepit flagship will veer, helmed by an increasingly hegemonic informal centre-/far-right alliance. The fruits of rearmament, ostensibly to deal with a belligerent Russia, can easily be repurposed once it becomes clear that Russia is a spent force, and levelled against migrants at European borders instead. Climate change denial, too, will fade into the background in this earthly paradise, only to be replaced with the far more dangerous ecofascism.

Yet, there a few (potentially insurmountable) barriers remain. For one, most of Europe cannot sustain the kind of wages that a minuscule, rentierist country like Denmark can. There are also far more Europeans than Gulf Arabs, making a Dubai-style Garden of Earthly Delights a bit of an ambitious goal. And finally, fashioning a country that is welcoming to “skilled” workers while being brutally austere to “unskilled” ones is a particularly delicate balancing act — you need to be racist, but not too racist, and you need to pay better than your competitors. It is far from clear that Europe is capable of playing this game nearly as effectively as the United States or the Gulf countries are. This will sharpen the effects of the polycrisis in Europe. And in all honesty, at least as far as left politics is concerned: this is far better than the stable, ultra-racist gluttony of the Gulf.

Quite apart from our moral responsibility towards the most vulnerable working-class migrants struggling to make a living, it is critical to remember that residence rights go hand-in-hand with labour movements. The infinite exploitation of foreign workers is enabled not by their mere presence, but by their legal precarity: workers cannot go on strike if doing so is likely to be met with instant deportation. The need of the hour for the European left is to genuinely, honestly engage with the trajectory that the combination of border controls and capitalist growth has placed Europe on. At this point, the victory of the deport model is bound to lead to militarised fascism, which is bound to eventually turn inwards. And while the victory of the Gulf model might appear to buy us a few years, it also spells the death of labour organising; failure; discontent; and eventually — militarised fascism.

Red Flag: On trial for being assaulted

In his weekly column, Nathaniel Flakin looks at another ridiculous case of repression against Palestine solidarity in Berlin

Vintage cartoon of one person getting punished while another is crowned. The female personification of Justice looks on, smiling.

George Orwell described a totalitarian dictatorship thus: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Germany is not yet fascist, but we nonetheless have to deal with political gaslighting at the level of 1984: politicians and media demand that we don’t believe what we see with our own eyes. They will show images of heavily armed cops punching pro-Palestinian protestors… and claim in a voiceover that it was police who were attacked. They will quietly admit that Israel attacked Iran in defiance of international law… and still insist that “Israel is defending itself.”

In German, this is called Täter-Opfer-Umkehr: reversing victim and offender.

In this video from December 14, 2023, you can see Zionist provocateurs at the Free University (FU) of Berlin shoving, punching, and yelling “Nazis” at pro-Palestinian protestors (all of which is illegal under German law). They then proceed to destroy posters showing Palestinians murdered by the Israeli army (similarly banned).

Yet Berlin’s public prosecutors must be Orwell fans. Watching the video, you might think you see the young person in the white vest and leopard-print shirt being spit at, hit, and insulted—aren’t they reacting with a level of patience that would make Jesus blush? Yet Baki Devrimkaya, about to start training to become a nurse, has been charged with assault, and has to appear in court next Thursday, July 17, at 8:30.

After pro-Palestinian students occupied a lecture hall at FU, Devrimkaya was the subject of a right-wing smear campaign, leading to death threats in social media and even intimidation on the street.

This is being framed as a case of “antisemitism.” While it’s true that the attacker from the video was himself the victim of a much-publicized assault the following year, there are also multiple reports about him physically attacking pro-Palestinian students at FU. 

H.P. Loveshaft, a Jewish student who was next to Devrimkaya at the protest, tried to get between the provocateurs and the protestors, and was himself shoved around (he’s the one with rainbow-colored hair in the videos). “I should have taken off my glasses,” he recalls thinking. Was this Zionist attack on an anti-Zionist Jewish student also an example of “antisemitism”? Left-wing Jews like Loveshaft, who was born in Moscow and grew up in Israel and the United States, are ignored and slandered by German media

It’s near impossible to say with any certainty what Germany’s Jewish community thinks about the genocide in Gaza. The government claims that all Jews support Israel, yet this lacks any empirical basis. Jewish students have been part of every pro-Palestinian protest at FU, and the occupation of a lecture hall in late 2023 was no exception. Right-wing media claimed that a pro-genocide agitator was excluded “because he was Jewish.” This is ridiculous, not only was he inside the hall, but he was disrupting an event co-organized by Jewish students opposed to genocide.

Devrimkaya’s case is not isolated. The German state has spent 21 months banning demonstrations, beating protestors, and cancelling artists. This has led to an official reproach by the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights. Hundreds of FU students have faced criminal charges from their own university for protesting. As one retired professor put it, this is the worst repression in the university’s 75-year history.

This is not a uniquely German problem. In the US, the Trump administration, following Biden’s lead, has been attacking campus protests for Palestine, even attempting to deport students for exercising their right to free speech. In France, the state has been prosecuting Anasse Kazib and other politicians for criticizing the government. In the UK, the government has declared Palestine Action to be a terrorist organization

In Germany, however, the last few months have seen courts rejecting some of the most absurd charges against Palestine solidarity activists. At Devrimkaya’s trial, we will see whether judges will allow us to believe our own eyes—or whether we must repeat that every Zionist act of aggression is really just “self-defense.” We should attend the trial to support victims of right-wing violence—and to defend our right to believe our own eyes.

Red Flag is a weekly column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel Flakin has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears at The Left Berlin.

Enough is enough

After 50 years of neo-colonialism, Kenyan fierce Gen Z is taking the power back to the people

and
09/07/2025

Mass protests have marked Kenya’s recent past and are now growing with the angry people who are tired of unemployment, high costs of living, excessive police violence, injustice and the neo-colonial corruption. The police response is – as usual – brutal use of force with at least 16 people killed and 400 injured on the commemoration day of the June 25th 2024 youth uprising that left sixty killed, hundreds injured and many tortured and disappeared. Yet, this time Kenya’s Gen Z is determined to keep on going and resist.

Recently, on July 7th more people have been shot and arrested at the protests for the 35th anniversary of the so called Saba Saba – “seven seven” – uprising in 1990 where people pushed the one party state towards democtartic transition.

And this is not just a Kenyan storwy. It is part of a continental crisis, a reckoning with the failures of post-colonial capitalism across Africa – from the anti-French rebellions in the Sahel to the strikes in South Africa, and the food protests in North Africa.

As I landed at the airport of Nairobi in December 2024, installed an app and ordered a taxi to pick me up, I waited at the driveway of the quite large taxi square so the driver could easily spot me. He arrived, welcomed me, I threw my small bag on the back seat and jumped in. About twenty meters further we were stopped by a police officer who demanded he pay a KES 2000 – approx. $15 – fine for stopping in the wrong place. We didn’t block any traffic and the whole procedure took about ten seconds. Luckily the driver was nicely articulate, telling the officer that since I’m a tourist I couldn’t yet know the country’s rules, so he wanted to be nice and stop where I was standing. I switched on my biggest smile and apologized for my stupidity. The cop let us go.

The driver turned out to be extremely friendly, chatty and angry – angry at the corrupt police and the politicians who just harass hard working people instead of doing something to enhance their lives. All the way downtown he explained to me how the country works, or doesn’t work. The fines like ours are a common practice – I heard more similar cases throughout my stay – and the airport even has its own lock up for the ones, like the driver, who cannot pay. He told, since most of the customers now pay through the app, he doesn’t even carry much cash – let alone the KES 2000 would be his whole day’s salary. Usually, since it was Friday evening, he’d stayed locked up until Monday when there would be the next chance for a short court ruling to release him.

Yet, this is just a teeny-tiny tip of a tremendous iceberg of police violence, suppression of opposition and protests, clientelism, tribalism and neo-colonial imperialism.

In June 2024 protests against a proposed, International Monetary Fund (IMF) backed, tax bill on essentials like bread or cooking oil, sparked an almost spontaneous mass uprising. This was first led decentralized by the Kenyan educated middle-class youth active on social media but soon connecting more groups, like the “hustlers”: street vendors, waiters or taxi-app-drivers who need to top up their small salaries or for whom the informal sector is the only means of income – up to 85% of Kenyans earn their living through informal sector.

“We wake up every day to go and hustle, but you can’t even buy anything these days because life has become so expensive,” said Daniel Mwangi, a 32-year-old informal worker, as he weaved his way through the crowd on the streets clouded pink from water cannon spray.

“We don’t have work so we can be here [protesting] every day. If we can’t find something to live for, we will find something to die for.”

Yet, the protests were not merely about the tax but of a deeper structural issues that lie in the country’s colonial past and the imperialism of the present. In 2024 women were marching against femicide, there were strikes by doctors, teachers, and university lecturers, workers resisting the planned privatisation of Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, as well as university students opposing the new tuition funding model.

However, Kenya has long been struggling with the interest payments of loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank that take up to 37% of annual revenue. The proposed finance bill by president Ruto aimed to raise an additional $2.7bn in taxes for the debt load. Yet, since the extrajudicial killings and massive use of police violence didn’t seem to hold back the protesters, Ruto eventually gave in, withdrew the bill and appointed a new cabinet – only to sign a new bill a year later to be implemented July 1st 2025 with eg. increased VAT and cease of zero rated products like milk, bread and flour. However, the street protests 2024 reduced over time, but killings, arrests and disappearances continued, triggering more anger towards the authorities. In particular, the gigantic urban informal settlements, like Mathare in Nairobi, have been the main targets of extrajudicial killings and police violence in recent years demonstrating the inherent structural class struggle in the country.

Now one year later the unlawful killing of the teacher and blogger Albert Ojwang in police custody after reportedly criticising a deputy police chief on social media has sparked the protests of the furious Gen Z – as the organic and decentralized movement calls itself. In addition, during the demonstrations over Ojwang’s death, police shot the vendor Boniface Kariuki, who was selling masks on the street, at close range; an incident that fuelled more outrage. Despite police firing teargas and water cannons, hitting with batons or whipping and even shooting, the crowds keep taking to the streets in the major cities of Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu but also elsewhere in the country. The protesters are calling for the president William Ruto to step down but are also fighting for thorough political change against the corrupt elites and imperialist, neo colonial exploitation structures.

“Why is it [the anger] growing? Because the demands from last year – including corruption, bad governance, and police brutality – have not been addressed. We gave the government time for change, to form a cabinet free from corruption, but instead, we’ve seen recycled leaders and an increase in abductions instead.”

“The government is taking us as a joke. They don’t want to listen to us … they don’t listen to us as citizens. We are the people, and they’re supposed to listen because of the power of the people.”

The long tentacles of settler colonialism

What is now Kenya has been colonised and exploited by the British East African Company since 1895. Yet, when the country was eventually incorporated into the British Empire as a “crown land” in 1920, large parts of the fertile land were taken from the local population. The areas were declared ‘White Highlands’ and taken over by white settlers who soon established an apartheid structures similar to South Africa. From 1923, the colonial authorities banned Africans from owning any land outside the reserves. The many indigenous farmers who had become landless and thus destitute had no choice but to work on white-owned farms. In this way, the mostly wealthy white settlers secured a constant flow of cheap labour. Moreover, the white colonialists established prisons as well as prison camps to fasten their power and to imprison people for “crimes” they did not know of, as well as to pay outrageously high fines. Prisoners were obligated to work on agriculture and public projects and forced labour was considered an essential part of the colonial economy.

This exploitation and accumulation structure with the confiscation of the land led to a rural exodus to the large urban centres and laid down the dynamics that continue to shape the inequality and Kenya’s imperial dependency until today. Although resisted with various means from already early on, the repression and impositions by the colonial state eventually culminated in the outbreak of the anti-colonial, socialist Mau Mau uprising in 1952. This would modify the already brutal colonial prison system into a detention of tens of thousands of Mau Mau at concentration camps. Mathare, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Nairobi, can be traced back to such a concentration camp under British colonial rule.

Yet, despite the fierce and successful Mau Mau insurgency for independence, the country never became truly self-determined. Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya and once one of the masterminds of the anti-colonial struggles, with his KANU party soon turned the new independent Kenya into a neo-colonial, anti-socialist, de facto one party state banning its rivalry, socialist Kenya People’s Union and ousting the Mau Mau movement and its members who once risked their lives for the independence but haven’t received any compensation until this day. Thus, Kenyatta seized the power from the UK and the white settlers but kept the old unequal class structures that culminated into the question of resources and land just handing the colonial power over to his own political as well as tribal group. Hence the exploitation of the people continued just by the Kenyan own capitalist, Global North educated, elite.

What is more, the new “independent” government did not wait for long to commit its first assassination of the popular pan-Africanist revolutionary Pio Gama Pinto in 1965. Pinto – among others – had continued pushing for a socialist transformation and economic emancipation against the new neo-colonial imperialism and was also connected with the global anti-imperialist and socialist movements as well as Malcolm X in the US. Hence, he faced the same fate as many socialist, internationalist leaders of the time.

“By the time of Kenyan independence, he [Pinto] had reached a point where he could oust the capitalist, conservative ruling elite that had replaced the colonial powers,” says Wunyabari Maloba, professor of African studies and history at the University of Delaware. (Al Jazeera)

 “He had a radical vision and was very much respected by Black Africans so it was extremely important for him to be silenced. Yet his death can’t be viewed just within the domestic context, this was also the time of the Cold War and Kenya was at a pivotal place in eastern Africa.”

Yet by the end of the 1970s, British companies that had remained in power- such as Unilever (formerly East Africa Industries until 2000) – and other multinational corporations controlled most of Kenya’s key economic sectors, like agriculture, infrastructure, and finance. The “independent” state continued protecting their operations and wealth accumulation abroad while the local working class impoverished and the inequality in the country arose. Hence, until today, the majority of the country’s economy remains under foreign capital and just 0.1% of Kenyans own more wealth than the remaining 99.9%.

In addition to the old colonial framework, Kenyan leaders have also made use of the post-colonial exploitation instrument of the “Western” imperial powers: the loans of the IMF and the World Bank. These loans came with vast economic and political reforms, the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP), with privatisation of a wide range of profit-making parastatal companies in eg. tourism, brewery, pharmaceuticals and heavy industry as well as a high raise of tuition fees in universities in the end of the 1980s and the beginning of 1990s.

In practice, healthcare, education, housing, and food subsidies were gutted. Kenya became emblematic of the post-colonial state Frantz Fanon warned against, subject to the ‘pitfalls of national consciousness’ and a vehicle for elite and imperialist interests. With this transformation, the NGOs from the Global North started to pour into the country with their donor money and neoliberal, hegemonial frameworks. This white saviorism depoliticised the struggle and transformed local activism into the well known dependency structures

Furthermore, due to its geographic location in East Africa, Kenya is of imperial military interest. The US maintains a permanent army presence in Mandela Bay, close to the Somali border. Operations in the neighbouring country are coordinated from here, but the base has also played an important role in the planning and execution of the US drone war in Yemen in recent years. Also, the United Kingdom uses the country primarily as a training base for its own armed forces, the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (BATUK). There are 300 British soldiers permanently stationed at a total of five bases in the country. Moreover, Israel also maintains close relations with Kenya. This goes back to even before the founding of the Israeli state. Before Palestine was eventually chosen as the country for the settlement, parts of the Zionist movement were in favour of founding a state in the British colonies of East Africa. Indeed, a small number of Zionist settlers made Kenya their new home at the beginning of the 20th century, laying the foundations for a long-lasting and strategic relationship between Israel and Kenya. For many years, the General Service Unit, a special paramilitary police unit specialising in counter-insurgency, was trained by Israeli services.

Enough is enough

The Kenyan government has now been imposing further SAP austerity measures although these evidently lead to further poverty and division of the working class with income inequality, unemployment and lower living standards and therefore increased crime rate, discrimination, ethnic tensions. Indeed, while Kenya’s economy has grown, salaries haven’t improved and especially the now higher educated youth face hardships in finding employment to finance the increasing living costs. The IMF bail outs including removing subsidies has led to a skyrocket of food prices and fuel causing intolerable electricity bills as well as more expensive transportation since there is no public transportation network in Kenyan cities but privately owned matatu companies – the minivan buses typical to the African continent.

“The salary I was employed with, despite being increased a little here and there over the years, has not kept up with the cost of living. My monthly budget five years ago cannot even provide for my basic needs right now. I had to find a way to earn extra income. I had to find a side hustle.”

While many of the “hustler nation” sense marginalization and disempowerment, the old political elite around the descents of Jomo Kenyatta and his sphere have continued their lavish lifestyle as business as usual with private jets and new fleets of luxury vehicles shown on social media. Yet, now Gen Z is determined to rise against this inequality and fight austerity, the IMF and neo-colonial exploitation. Inspired by the Arab Spring, Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement and Nigeria’s #EndSARS as well as equipped with encrypted messaging applications and Telegram groups for organizing, Kenyan youth are calling for their own solutions of governance and self-determination without political party support but from the bottom. Most significantly, in a country where ethnicity based “tribalism” has long been the key nominator in politics, economy and leadership, there now seems to be a shift into a more class-based consciousness and solidarity. Now, the Gen Z protests collect people together across ethnic, regional, class, gender or generational lines and cut ties with the business leaders who, as the protesters see it, are the complicit in the capitalist exploitation structure. 

We can only hope the class struggle also reaches the Kenyan soldiers – as it has been the case in other African countries in a revolution, such as Burkina Faso – to stop the future imperialist military interventions from the US, UK and Israel backed army bases. Indeed, the UK BATUK forces are have been committing vast human rights violations, including rape, mistreatment, torture, unlawful detention, and killings sofar acting in impunity. The unit is also accused of destroying land and using toxic chemicals in their trainings. Needless to say, it seems that these troops would not leave the country just upon a friendly request. Yet, the example of Sahel has so far shown that it is possible to erase the “Western” imperialist military from an independent soil.

However, during my stay in Nairobi, I spent quite some taxi journeys chatting and wondering about the brand new Nairobi Expressway, a 27-kilometre toll highway straight on top of an older road through the city connecting the airport with the higher middle-class neighbourhood of Westlands. Why build a new expensive high way for private cars that only benefits the wealthy instead of eg. a proper tram network in a city that is shocking in traffic and pollution and where the working class keeps stuck in the overcrowded matatus and a motorbike taxi is often the only proper way forward? Throughout my travels in various African countries, I’ve been constantly given the same answer to my questions about resistance: “We are demoralized. In the past it was clear who the enemy is but now we are exploited by our own people.” Yet, the Gen Z seems to be now changing this mindset with social media as a tool of organizing and spreading the word and the power and the sense of a new inclusive solidarity and comradeship. 

Ibrahim Traoré: A new dictator or true socialist revolutionary? 

Love him or hate him, the interim President of Burkina Faso is breaking chains between Africa and the imperialist neo-colonial modus operandi. 

“Their goal is to keep us in a state of permanent war so that we cannot develop and they can continue to plunder our resources.”

—Ibrahim Traoré, May 10th 2025

Following in the footsteps of Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary Marxist president of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré seized power in a coup in 2022. 

Almost three years later, he is widely celebrated in Africa as the new pan-Africanist, Marxist leader, with the determination to dismantle imperialist chains to France by forging a new alliance between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

The Global North, however, accuses him of being yet another authoritarian populist ruler full of empty promises.

“Rather than a beacon of hope, Burkinabè tyrant Ibrahim Traoré is a pointer to everything that is wrong with the continent.” Ebenezer Obadare, Council on Foreign Relations, New York.

“To the disillusioned youth across the continent, he offers a seductive promise: progress without the inconveniences of democracy. But behind the revolutionary slogans and Sankara-inspired aesthetics lies a far less romantic reality.” Umar Farouk Bala, Premium Times.

Meanwhile Traoré, the charismatic 37-year-old visionary, has laid the foundations of a promising leader in his short life.  Described as being ‘very talented’ and ‘quiet’ in his early years, he studied Geology at the University of Ouagadougou where he graduated with honours adeund joined the Association of Muslim Students and the Marxist National Association of Students of Burkina Faso (ANEB). 

He went on to join the Army of Burkina Faso, was promoted to lieutenant in 2014 and joined the UN peacekeeping forces MINUSMA during the Mali war. He returned to Burkina Faso where he assisted in countering several Islamist terrorist insurgencies. After he was promoted to Captain in 2020, however, he expressed disillusionment with the country’s leadership and corruption.

With his impressive background, it stands to reason that he is celebrated by many as a true revolutionary hero and a pan-Africanist forerunner for the rest of the continent to break the colonial chains once and for all.

“Indeed, due to his unwavering commitment and patriotism, Captain Ibrahim Traoré has become a star, an inspiration, and a champion of anti-imperialism, posing a genuine threat to imperialism in Africa. He is forging a new path not just for post-colonial African nations, but for the world.” Pan Africanism Today Secretariat.

Beverly Ochieng, a senior researcher at global consultancy firm Control Risks, told the BBC: “His messages reflect the age we are living in, when many Africans are questioning the relationship with the West, and why there is still so much poverty in such a resource-rich continent.”

Western attempts to curb Traoré’s determination to free his country from the clutches of imperialism and neo-colonialism appear almost laughable as the number of assassination attempts mount and his popularity surges.

The estimated number of attempts on his life lies between 18 and 20, indicating his policies are considered a threat to the imperial order that is already heavily shaken by the rise of China.  

In contrast, France, the U.S., IMF and the World Bank have not been interested in overthrowing authoritarian leaders in other African countries, such as Paul Biya in Cameroon, Teodoro Mbasogo in Equatorial Guinea or Alassane Ouattara in Cote D‘Ivoire as long as they cooperate and maintain the exploitation structures for cheap minerals and raw materials. 

After becoming demoralized about the country’s governance and being a spokesperson for soldiers voicing their concerns about the leadership and lack of resources to properly fight terrorists, he joined Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba’s coup to seize power of the country in January 2022. 

However, the new government failed to contain ISIS-Sahel and other extremist groups which controlled 40% of Burkina Faso’s territory at the time or combat poverty in the country. By September 2022, Traoré and his group had carried out another coup overthrowing Damiba and accusing him of collaborating with France.

Human Rights Watch reports Traoré’s junta began cracking down on dissent inside and outside the country via forced disappearances and adding journalists and activists to lists of wanted terrorists. The list includes prominent critics of the junta such as exiled journalists and activists.

Meanwhile, elections had been scheduled for June 2024 but on May 25, 2024, the junta announced that it would remain in power for another five years, following nationwide talks that were largely boycotted by the opposition.

“If we have to say it loud and clear here, we are not in a democracy, we are in a popular, progressive revolution.” 

While openly admitting Burkina Faso is not a democracy, Ibrahim Traoré has done more for the people of Burkina Faso in two years than the French backed former president Compaoré did in over 30 years in power. 

He told Burkina24 “It is impossible to name a country that has developed in democracy. Democracy is only the end result.” 

He goes on to explain: “We must necessarily go through a revolution, and we are indeed in a revolution,” and that they will continue to help people understand what revolution is.

This current transformation is the result of a series of coups in former French colonies in West Africa linked to dissent over poverty, corruption, insurgent violence and neo-colonialist exploitation instruments, such as the currency, CFA Franc, and French military bases. 

Assimi Goïta took over Mali in 2021 and in 2023 Abdourahamane Tchiani led the coup in Niger.

Despite public support for the coups, the UN, the African Union, ECOWAS – the imperialist backed union of West African states, USA, France and other EU countries condemned the coups in the three countries. This came in the form of ‘sanctions, withdrawal of aid, suspensions from the AU and ECOWAS, cancellation of trade and loan offer agreements, freezing assets at the Central Bank of West African States, suspensions of security cooperation by France and the US, border closures by surrounding ECOWAS member States and even threats of an ECOWAS invasion led by Nigeria,’ according to the Socialist Workers League.

Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger then came together in 2023 to establish their own anti-imperialist confederation: The Alliance of the Sahel States (AES, Alliance des États du Sahel).

Security is a core issue for the three countries after NATO’s invasion in Libya 2011 destabilized the region and led to the rise of various Al-Qaeda and IS affiliated groups across the Sahel. The alliance will especially work together against these armed extremist groups that have left thousands dead and millions displaced in recent years. 

Previously relying on French and US troops that badly failed people and have been accused of various human rights violations, the AES has expelled these troops and is turning towards Russia for support as well as relying on a civilian-led Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP’s) in Burkina Faso that collaborates between the government and forces from Niger and Mali to combat Islamist terrorist groups.

Burkina Faso now seems to be responding actively and swiftly to the needs of the public with a wide range of reforms.

The government has launched agricultural reform, including a farm equipment distribution programme that has significantly increased agricultural production and led to a consistent GDP growth of 4-6%. 

Traoré’s government has also enhanced the country’s infrastructure and industrialization with the first state-owned dairy factory, pharmaceutical and food production facilities to facilitate a move away from the country’s dependence on exporting raw materials for imperialist profits.

Furthermore, Traoré has rejected the presidential salary taking only the salary of an army captain; a gesture that gained him respect and trust right from the beginning. He has also cut the ministers’ pay by 30% while increasing public sector wages by 50%.

Moreover, Burkina Faso has now nationalized its gold reserves, its number one export, by renegotiating exploitative contracts and withdrawing mining permits from some foreign companies, as well as established a domestic gold refinery to process their own resources. 

Meanwhile, Mali has introduced new environmental regulations, bills and taxes on foreign mining companies, established SOREM – a state-owned mining company – in 2022 and nationalized gold mines from South African and Canadian companies.

Despite being the world’s seventh-largest producer of uranium-based energy, Niger has remained one of the lowest consumers of electricity globally, while the French nuclear weapons program and the system of French nuclear power generation is dependent on uranium mined from open pits near the city of Arlit in Niger. 

Now Niger has revoked French nuclear giant Orano’s uranium mining licence.

Further to nationalizing natural resources, the AES is planning to introduce its own gold backed currency “the Sahel”. The Franc CFA – the thus far commonly used currency in the former French colonies – is controlled by the French treasury and coupled to the Euro remains subordinate to French capital power, undermining the true self-determination of the AES’ own economies. 

The first instrument of sovereignty is currency. You cannot be sovereign if someone else mints your currency. It’s clear that we’re not going to stay in this CFA franc affair. France itself knows it.” Niger’s Foreign Minister, Bakary Yaou Sangaré stated in April this year at the summit in Russia. Beyond the security cooperation Sangaré indicated that Russia could play a key role in facilitating the transition to a new currency.

Nevertheless, despite the bold projects and visible progress, the revolution against capitalism and imperialism still faces multiple challenges in the highly mineral export-oriented economies. 

Mali for instance, suffers from immense electricity supply issues and is also currently under pressure to pay back an over $90 million loan for the Manantali dam and power plant that also supplies Senegal as well as Mauritania. 

Indeed, the electricity issue discredits the popular support of the new military leaders who also – unlike Traoré – continue paying themselves the high presidential salaries. All in all, the three countries are in very different stages in terms of the social realities, military transition, management of public affairs, corruption, nepotism and clientelism.

Hence, the significance of the alliance will remain a subject of debate among working-class activists, students, pan-Africanists, socialists and Marxists.

Will the first authoritarian instruments of Traoré and the AES lead to a true self-empowered, socialist region or even spark a revolution throughout the continent? Or do the reforms only undermine the state capitalist power interests or even larger imperialist goals of a new army elite now backed by Putin’s Russia and the Wagner Group? 

Regardless, it is the people themselves who have been fighting the neo-colonial exploitation for decades and the AES leaders cannot simply ignore the will and the power of the people that has now sparked anew providing fresh consciousness of empowerment.

“As socialists and working-class activists in Africa, we must realise that the total liberation of Africa can be won and defended only by we, the working masses, ourselves. Our anti-imperialist politics must be rooted in anti-capitalist struggle and our fight to win the battle of democracy.” Emmanuel Edomwonyi, Socialist Workers League, Nigeria.

As the global community wakes up to the AES, protests on the 30th of April in solidarity with Traoré and Burkina Faso in cities across Africa and Europe sent a clear message that people will no longer tolerate assassinations and imperialist invasions but stand with a sovereign Africa. 

Socialists of the Global North must resist Eurocentric patronizing solutions and trust the power and the will of the people of the region to empower themselves with their own structures and ideas and continue the struggle against our own governments and the capitalist elites; resist the new European militarization that would also include imperialist invasions and other counter revolutionary attempts and to fight for open borders and safe migration routes. 

We must create safer spaces for Africans to speak up for themselves and raise awareness about the exploitation of the people and the resources and further global capitalist structures. We must stay in dialogue and solidarity with the people of the AES and everywhere in the Global South.

Because none of us is free until all of us are free!