Let's put 'colonial justice' on trial!
09.Jul.02 - Preface: This text is from a special issue of the MIB‚s newspaper called 'L'Echo des Cités' (sept 2001). It has been devoted to Youssef Khaif's case. Youssef was killed by a cop in 1991. His family and MIB have fought for 10 years to try to have justice. On September 2001, the cop is finally on trial in 'Court d'Assises' (crown court)...
In France, a social, economic, and politic segregation policy, control by the Ministry of the Interior (Home Office) has made continued on, in the substance, transforming the form, a colonial policy: refusal to give socials and politics rights, full array of segregationists measures∑
Human beings are reduced , according to their memberships and their origins, to be excluded of the citizenship field, of wealth and sharing.
From the production line to the nowadays suburban ghetto wasted by socials problems produced by a thriving economy, the collapse of law and order is always present as the responsible.
[...]
The French economy took a heavy toll of the previous generations: their youthfulness stolen, their failing health give evidences. They have never been recognized, nor even rewarded for their efforts. It‚s that contempt we want to talk about when we demand justice for Youssef Khaïf.
Because that police 'errors' - which are murders commit by people with uniforms, in the service of the State - are just representing that continuance of the colonial order from the past.
Yes, Youssef Khaif was in a stolen car, the evening when he was killed. Like several ghetto young, he tried to run away from 'Val Fourrée', his quarter in order to forget, just for one evening, his galley slave situation of broke man. Because when you're 20 years old, you need hope.
His memory, for those who, like us, knew him, has to be restored with exactness. Youssef was a resistant against every days injustices, not receptive at all to flannels of politicians who only promise while the young are filling prisons and cemetery, victim of a tiredness of life which is programmed in ministries and stock exchanges, and institutionalised by discriminatory policy.
We have to do what are necessary to raise the trial of the cop who killed Youssef as the trial of that colonial policy which massacred our parents in the past, and which is murdering ghetto youth now.
Thursday September the 27th, while the court will put our quarters on trial, we will organise, in front of the courthouse 'the trial of the law'.
We will put colonial history's lapses of memory on trial We will accuse French institutions to be responsible for the management of discriminations We will talk about islamophobia, about collectives trials and raids We will react to immigration and suburb demotion
Postface: The mobilisation took place in front of the courthouse. People from several towns of France had answered to the call of the MIB. Things happened as we had thought. The trial was reversed. They put suburb's young on trial instead the police. But factors that constitute the offence was recognized.The verdict said: 'Acquittal!', We called that verdict: 'the killing licence for the police' while other people called it: 'the Hatred Factory'
Mouvement de l'Immigration et des Banlieues