HomeOpEdCommentary COMMENTARY Struggle continues for Africans seeking justice worldwide SHARE BOOKMARKPRINTRATING By Joseph Ochieno Posted Sunday, September 8 2013 at 01:00 SHARE THIS STORY 0 inShare August is a month as significant as many come, for Africans seeking justice around the world. Fifty years ago, August 28 was the day Dr Martin Luther King Jr made his, now famous ‘I have a dream’ speech in Washington DC in front of hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom were African-Americans who were then seeking racial equality, justice, economic emancipation and rights that ‘democracy’ grants a nation and its free peoples. Dr King prayed that he dreamt for a time when his children would freely live side by side with peoples of other races, equally share social, political and economic opportunities while being judged purely on the content of their beings. The richest and perhaps the most famous African woman alive today, Oprah Winfrey believes for instance, that her being and surrounds with opportunities, are definitely because Dr King lived. I suggest that because of the foundations he and the generations before and slightly after imbedded, Barack Obama is president of the US today. When in the 1990s I would join marches in London to demonstrate against the British police, I would tell my mind’s eye that there would be a moment when Africans in the streets of Europe would be considered rightful citizens like everyone else, everywhere. At that time, we were campaigning for justice for Stephen Lawrence, a 18-year-old student who was killed by white racist youths in Eltham, South London in 1993. I lived three miles away from the scene. For this and other reasons associated with my own campaigns against dictatorship at ‘home’, I moved house a couple of years later. The police played substantially ‘inadequate’ but after a series of campaigns, pressure and, with the arrival of a Labour government and a public enquiry, a stormy report declared the police ‘Institutionally Racist”. First forward - 20 years - Stephen’s mother Doreen Lawrence was six weeks ago made a Baroness, with a seat in the British House of Lords to sit on the Labour benches. All for her dignity, persistence and struggle for justice for her slain son. A week later, The Guardian newspaper (Monday, August 5, 2013) carried a heading “ Ian Tomlison family win apology from Met police over death in 2009”. Again, after years of campaign and litigation, police admitted using ‘excessive and unlawful force’ during a G20 protest in London. The man later died. While security services may target communities or, simply ‘categories’ and whereas recognising that these organisations are staffed by human beings, it is the circumstances, responses and finality of real or perceived justice that make the ultimate difference. If in Uganda, certain individuals cannot ‘walk to work’, however ‘disruptive’ it might be, why not concede that it is their basic rights? A Public Order Management Bill is a case in point. So basic it is, one wonders what our national priorities actually are. But a recent story struck me. In Gulu District, 16-year-old Isaac Ocaya was on January 29, 2012 beaten to death at Johnson Highway Inn, by an apparent hit squad, allegedly hired by close members of his family from Amuru District. His crime? Allegedly causing the loss of a laptop! He was hurriedly buried in Gulu Senior Quarters. Unless compromised, why would CID officials fail to catch the culprits who are allegedly walking free when the victim is a close relative of senior people within an academic institution nearby or have ‘notes been compared’? Is it because after the war, land these days, is as precious as ‘oil’ so these discussions are now more important than the lives of its peoples or is it because criminal matters are these days resolved by national political leaders? Legislators Richard Todwong, Gilbert Olanya and Christopher Achire, this is a necessary Constituency case work. In seeking justice, Ugandans must believe in better. Joseph Ochieno is a columnist with New African Magazine and campaigns for democracy & human rights. [email protected]. @Ochieno
Posted on: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 13:58:41 +0000
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