Opinion

“Find out what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Fredrick Douglass, 1857

In solidarity with the BLM movement in the US, at the beginning of June in Belgium 1,200 people gathered in Antwerp, 750 in Ghent and 200 in Hasselt. In Brussels, between 10,000 and 12,000 people gathered at Place Poelaert, in front of the Palace of Justice. They were addressed by undocumented migrants demanding regularisation; families of the victims of police killings; anti-racist activists and others. Several highlighted the past crimes of Belgian colonialism and the fact that Belgian governments refuse to acknowledge and address them.

Despite the comparatively limited impact of Covid-19 on Africa, the continent as a whole is on the verge of its first recession in a quarter of a century. GDP growth is projected to fall from 2.4 percent in 2019 to between -2.1 percent and an eye-watering -5.1 percent this year. According to the IMF, this will be the sharpest contraction of the continent’s economy on record.

George Floyd’s racist murder was as public as it was graphic, but others have been just as brutal, casual and naked. Breonna Taylor was shot dead in March as she slept in her Louisville apartment by three police officers serving a ‘no-knock warrant’. On 1 June, police in northern California fatally shot unarmed 22-year-old Sean Monterrosa, who was on his knees with his hands raised outside a Walgreens store as they responded to a call of ‘alleged looting’. “When confronted by the police, he dropped to his knees and surrendered, and they fired at him,” said a lawyer representing the family.