We oppose US imperialist intervention in Kenya and stand in solidarity with the Kenyan masses in their struggle for justice, equality, and the rights of the oppressed

Up to 23 people have been killed and over 300 arrested by the Kenyan government during a crackdown on protests against the Finance Act 2023, a US and IMF backed law? with backing of the US and IMF. In particular, protesters have decried the regressive taxation regime included in the Act as well as provisions that would further open the Kenyan economy to the domination of foreign finance and the super-exploitation of Kenya’s working classes.  

Echoing imperialist economic intervention elsewhere on the African continent and global South more broadly, this new Finance Act is designed to uphold the racist global order that has been in place for centuries- first created by the European colonial powers and now upheld by the world’s leading imperialist power, the US. US empire is on the wane and is threatened by the rise of a pluripolar world order. A future in which global South states are able to determine their own paths of development and implement sovereign economic and social policies designed to benefit their own people rather than the capitalist core is on the horizon. But to get there we must first resist and defeat those imperialist forces that are bent on keeping the peoples of the global South subjugated.

Although the US government never tires of speaking of “human rights”, we know what its interests are in Kenya- to protect the investments of the capitalist class in the imperialist core. This was made apparent in Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman’s comments, in which she said the new law will  “give Americans safety on investing in the country.”  

As anti-imperialist organizers located in the belly of the beast, we condemn the United States continuous interference in the sovereign affairs of the Kenyan state through so-called security and military “assistance” as well as economic interventions through imperialist controlled institutions like the IMF and World Bank.

In solidarity with the protesters, we support their demands for revoking the 2023 Finance Act and to release all political prisoners. We share the Kenyan Communist Party’s call for all to be united the “struggle for justice, equality, and the rights of the oppressed…and we stand in solidarity with the people of Kenya in their fight for a just and equitable society.”

National Lawyers Guild International Committee
International Association of Democratic Lawyers
CRED/GIGI
National Association of Democratic Lawyers (South Africa)
Frantz Fanon Foundation
Palestinian Center for Human Rights
Democratic Lawyers Association of Bangladesh