Argentina - June 8th, 2018

The Police of the City of Buenos Aires brutally beats the Senegalese street vendor, Kane Serigne Dame

They stabbed him in the arm, seized his merchandise and detained him for the "crime" of working in the street and earning the daily bread with dignity

Enough is enough! Let's stop the repression of the bosses' state, the corrupt politicians and the anti-workers judges against the exploited and the poor people!

Trade unions and workers' organizations must lead the defense of workers and street vendors, natives and immigrants!

An injury to one is an injury to all!

Yesterday, Cresta Roja workers were repressed by the gendarmerie. Yesterday, dozens of men and women -who peacefully occupied a piece of land in Cordoba to build their homes and provide shelter for their families- were violently repressed. And if we look and analyze what happens every day, the scenario is the same: violence of the bourgeois state and its repressive institutions, to punish the workers and the people. It is the bestiality of the ruling class, which massacres and relentlessly represses to force to kneel the majority, which torments and oppresses for the benefit of a handful of parasites who live based on the blood, effort and sacrifice of others. Don’t we see snipers in the occupying Zionist army shoot and kill the Palestinians who want to regain their nation? Or how Al Assad and Putin, under the watchful eyes of Trump and NATO, advance by bombings in their genocide against the Syrian people to end up crushing the heroic revolution? And whoever who does not see it, should quickly remove the blindfold because it will end up being an accomplice of the aberrant savagery of the capitalists.

On Tuesday an atrocious image ran through all social networks on cell phones. A Senegalese street vendor, Kane Serigne Dame, was lying on the floor. He was bloodied and surrounded by policemen. A few minutes before, police officers of the City attacked with sticks and shot him. While one of the officers ones removed a razor and nailed him in the arm. The cut was so deep that it pierced an artery and Kane faint in the act. What was the "crime" that could have caused a black street vendor who emigrated from Senegal escaping from poverty and misery -that plague in the martyred Africa- to survive in Argentina? HE CAME TO WORK!

With his raw arm spilling a river of blood, totally unconscious, Kane was taken by these murderous policemen to Alvarez Hospital where he had to undergo surgery and then they leave him in detention for not "obeying the authority" and for "violating the Law of Brands". CYNICALS! They only invented excuses! Because this is how the state and the employers treat the immigrant workers and exploited, they are treated as slaves and if they have the "audacity" to make a request for a simple improvement to the black community they are killed like Massar Ba in 2016 (an advocate for the rights of African street vendors). Remember the workers of the underground shop of Luis Viale who died because of the laziness and thirst for profits of the textile employers and the big brands of clothing. Recall how in December 2010 the police forces violently evicted thousands of immigrant workers who occupied the Indoamerican Park demanding housing for all. Three Bolivians were killed, but they could have been Peruvian, Paraguayan or Senegalese.

What we saw yesterday in Flores (Buenos Aires) is an every-day situation on the entire planet; and especially with the black exploited, who centuries ago were kidnapped from their native Africa to be sold as slaves in the United States and the rest of the world. That is why the Anglo American and the ANC government in August 2012 had no mercy to kill 34 Marikana miners who were fighting for a 12,500 rands salary in South Africa. That's why Obama and his police have been killing poor black youth like Michael Brown, Eric Gardner, Freddie Gray and many others, who can be seen dying at the hands of police terrorism, whether on American or European streets or in the streets of the Congo , Zimbabwe, South Africa, Brazil or Haiti.

“Flores is practically militarized. 50 commando troops came and they jumped over him. They beat him because they could not reduce him. Then came the Infantry and one pulled a knife and nailed him," one of the witnesses told to the newspaper Pagina12. Just in Flores is where Kane Serigne sells shoes. "He arrived in the country two years ago: at first he worked in Liniers, where the police seized the merchandise; He is now in Flores, where he must escape from the police to be able to work (Revista Critica)," his friends told to the reporters.

Kane Serigne Dame, like many of the Senegalese who arrive in Buenos Aires, lives in deplorable conditions. He got a "room in the back of a garage next to the Sarmiento train station. He does not have a shower, he bathes with water heated in pots. Together with his brother, who sells clothes, he goes to buy the merchandise to La Salada. And then the most difficult part: sell it without standing still for a second, constantly walking. Because if he slows down, if he stays for a while in a place, the police can say that his sale is not ambulatory, that it is a crime because he is 'usurping the public space' (Revista Critica). "I was just walking and they started attacking me. They wanted to take things away from me," Kane Serigne was able to communicate in one of the reports he was able to give after the events.

This cannot continue anymore. The working class must say enough. And stop once and for all, with their own methods of struggle, the repressive escalation of the government of Macri and all the "opposition" politicians who give him governance and approve most of their bills, that nothing good bring nor will bring for the workers and the exploited who live in Argentina. 

From the Internationalist Workers League of Zimbabwe and from Democracia Obrera of Argentina, we call on all national and international workers' organizations, beginning with those of Africa and Argentina, to surround solidarity and support to Senegalese comrades, who are tormented and persecuted by the police and the state. If the workers' organizations and the trade unions do not lead this fight, we will see more beatings and more attacks on immigrant workers and will increase the cases of trigger happy at the hands of the murderous police in the worker and popular neighborhoods and the repression and jail against all who fight. The assemblies should arise in workplaces, schools and universities. We are tired of being stabbed, killed or disappeared when we claim for what belongs to us. We are not in the presence of an isolated case, we are facing the criminal act of the state of the powerful ones, which come from killing the youths Santiago Maldonado and Rafael Nahuel in La Patagonia and keeps Jones Huala in prison for demanding land for the Mapuche exploited.

One class, one fight! Full rights for all immigrants! Equal pay for equal job! Papers for everyone now! Judgment and punishment to the assassins of Massar Ba! Down with the breed of anti-worker judges! Dissolution of the police and other repressive forces! For a single Self-Defense Committee of the workers' organizations to stop the repression against those who fight and against the exploited immigrants who have nothing in this "democracy" for the rich led from the US embassy to the service of the Wall Street bankers and the big transnational corporations that plunder Africa and Latin America!

Workers International League (WIL) of Zimbabwe
Liga Obrera Internacionalista (LOI-CI) Democracia Obrera of Argentina
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