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African Social Justice Network Papo Reto/Kenya & Brazil Solidarity Solidarity

Solidarity With MST

22/01/2025

Statement of Solidarity With Our MST Comrades in Defense of Dignity and Social Justice


Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC) unequivocally condemns the violent murders and systemic oppression targeting the Landless Workers’ Movement — the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) in Brazil.

On 10 January, the Olga Benário occupation in Tremembé, São Paulo, was attacked by armed men, who entered the occupation in cars and motorcycles.

They shot indiscriminately at residents, leaving two people dead and six people injured, and among these victims are children and elderly people.

The comrades who have fallen in the struggle are Valdir Nascimento and Gleison Barbosa.

Valdir Nascimento, known as “Valdirzão,” was a prominent figure in the struggle for agroecology and a staunch defender of occupied land. A committed member of MST since 1993, he dedicated his life to fighting illegal land sales and strengthening the peasant movement in the Paraíba Valley.

Gleison Barbosa, known as “Guegue,” was the son of a family living on the occupation. Although he lived in São Paulo, his dedication to the occupation led him to actively contribute to community efforts.

Denis Carvalho remains in an ICU ward after undergoing surgery to remove shrapnel from his head. His condition is critical.

These violent murders and abductions of people who fight for their freedom from oppression and exploitation all over the world, are a resounding rallying call for the working and struggling masses to unite, rise and defend their livelihoods and social justice. The struggle for dignity and social justice transcends borders.

As the Kenyan people continue to fight against the neo-colonial state, land is at the heart of our struggle. We declare our full and unwavering solidarity with the MST and the working people of Brazil. The MST continues to inspire millions by organizing the landless to occupy and defend their land. Their courageous resistance embodies the enduring spirit of hope and collective action in the face of imperialism.

The land belongs to those who work it, and its occupation is a testament to the resilience and determination of the oppressed to defend their dignity and build a just society.

In solidarity,
Gacheke Gachihi
Coordinator, MSJC.
ggacheke@gmail.com
¬+254720318049

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Mothers of Victims & Survivors Network Papo Reto/Kenya & Brazil Solidarity Solidarity Women in Social Justice Centres

“Killings Get Back, We are Moving Forward” : The Launch of the Network of Mothers of Victims and Survivors of Police Violence

This article was written about the Mother of Victims and Survivors Network launch, and was originally published on RioOnWatch, as part of “ongoing reporting on social struggles around the world that dialogue with the local reality in Rio de Janeiro and offer . ” We agree with RioOnWatch that “analyzing parallels and showing solidarity for peer communities allows us all to establish connections, share knowledge, build networks of support, and establish a sense of common experience and purpose.”

On February 15, nearly two years after beginning their work, the Mothers of Victims and Survivors Network launched their initiative at the (MSJC) in Mathare, Nairobi, .

The network is composed of close to fifty members from across the city’s low-income settlements—from Kayole, Mathare, Dandora, Mukuru, Kibera and elsewhere—all of whom have come together to seek justice for the killing or brutal victimization of members of their family, usually young men, by the police.

Echoing the struggles of the mothers of political prisoners in Kenya in the early nineties and similar inspirational mobilizations of madres and mães in and , the network is primarily composed of women. These are the wives of victims of extrajudicial killings.

Since 2017, the members of the Network have been coming together to support each other through grief, to offer solidarity in the judicial system for the mothers who have been lucky enough to have their cases reach court, to document new victims, and to strategize collectively. Though throughout this time they have witnessed and continue to experience the imbalances and biases of the Kenyan legal system, the day’s launch was a celebration of the Network’s tedious, painful, and painstaking work: of what they have accomplished and what they will continue to do to ensure justice for their communities.

In 2017, the MSJC, a community-based organization in the urban settlement of Mathare, released a participatory action report on extrajudicial killings in Kenya between 2013-2016. , titled “Who is Next?: A Participatory Action Research Report Against the Normalization of Extrajudicial Executions in Mathare,” chronicled the killing of at least 50 young men in Mathare and 803 nationally in the three-year period. While illustrative of the sinister force of the police in the country, most citizens recognize that this documentation is only the beginning. The number represents a minority of those who have been killed in the recent past and as “thugs” or “suspected terrorists.”

Some of the families of the young men killed and documented in this report and other ongoing MSJC documentation are represented in the Network.

, the current coordinator of the Mothers of Victims and Survivors Network, lost her two sons, Victor and Bernard, on the same day in 2017. They were killed, meters apart, by police officers who had invaded Mathare, ostensibly to quell protests provoked by the election results released a day earlier.

In case, another co-leader of the Network, her husband, Christopher Maina, was killed when she was eight months pregnant with their first child. He was dragged from a building site where he had been working and killed at 2pm on a public street. His killer, a notorious police officer named Rashid, executed one of the witnesses to Maina’s killing a year later. Having also been filmed killing two young men in Eastleigh two months after killing Maina, Rashid continues to work as a police officer. Unjustly vindicated in an biased , this breed of policing reflects that what the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions Agnes Callamard called, during her February 2020 visit to Mathare, typical of “.”

Another member of the network is Mama Stella, whose son was one of the . Though the media reported that they were “suspected thugs,” , and one was 17 years old. The group had plans to start a .

One of the youngest members of the network is 19-year-old Mso from Mathare, who has had two partners killed by the police in the same year. She is now left to care for two young sons in the same settlement where her husbands were killed.

While their family members are killed at whim, these women are unable to seek justice from government organizations such as the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA). According to its own “End-Term Board Report 2012 -2018,” the IPOA has only managed three convictions out of the 9878 cases it received during that period—, the vast majority of these cases remain under endless investigation. And yet, against the injustice of these conditions, the Network has continued to grow.

These women know that the killing of their family members is only one extreme outcome in a continuum of structural violence that features, among other things: , poor schools, inadequate health care, and the militarization of their homes. “Children being killed like kukus [chicken],” said one mother.

They also know that the government’s informally formalized “shoot to kill” policy is reserved for spaces like theirs. Wealthy areas of the city see no such policing.

For this reason, these mothers came together on February 15 wearing red shirts to represent the[ir] “blood that had been shed.” On the back of these shirts were only three words: “justice for victims.”

Together they sang and danced and marched determinedly, expressing how the[ir] “fire had been lit” [moto imewaka], while dedicating time to plant trees in memory of those they had lost.

As these trees grow and are taken care of in a community that is governed by , they will stand as symbols of residents’ struggle for justice. They will exist in opposition to a status quo, planted in a moment of change co-catalyzed when these mothers got up and said: “killings get back, we are moving forward.”

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EJE Campaign Papo Reto/Kenya & Brazil Solidarity

“Nossos Mortos Tem Voz” (Keeping Our Loved Ones Alive) screening at MSJC on June 22 @ 2 pm

On June 22 @ 2pm MSJC will screen “Nossos Mortos Tem Voz” (Keeping Our Loved Ones Alive), a film based on the testimonies of mothers and families of victims of police killings in Rio. This film will allow us to create parallels between the police violence in Baixada Fluminense in Rio and Brazil as a whole, with what we live through in Kenya. It is part of the growing solidarity we are working to have with Brazilian activists and movements. Welcome All!

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Papo Reto/Kenya & Brazil Solidarity

Mathare and Complexo do Alemão, Brazil solidarity: Coletivo Papo Reto together with MSJC

Over the last few months, MSJC has been having many conversations with activists in Brazil. In these conversations we have seen that the struggles we share are many: poor housing, police violence, a criminalization of our communities and many more.

Because of these issues, we are coming together to think of strategies we can share with each other, and ways to offer stronger and deeper solidarity.

In particular, we have started working with Coletivo Papo Reto, a community organization in the favela of Complexo do Alemao in Rio de Janeiro, that uses community journalism to document state violence and human rights abuses in their neighbourhood, and also to change the narratives used to talk about their community.

We continue working on these people-centre collaborations to learn from each other and care for each other, and create community-centre visions. We welcome you all to be a part of this solidarity!

 

 

 

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