Source: wechat official account: Bu Yidao has been authorized to reprint
Writing / huyidao
A protest took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) two days ago.
The protest took place in front of the US embassy in the local area.
The local people protested that one of their compatriots was killed by white police in the United States for no reason.
The reason why they held a protest was that African Americans were repeatedly “killed by mistake” in the United States.
After the “Freud incident”, although American society and public opinion paid attention to this situation, the discrimination and violence against ethnic minorities remained the same in real life after a storm.
In particular, the chaos of police violence and the proliferation of guns in the United States has made many people at the bottom “unable to breathe”.
01
Democratic Republic of the Congo infolive CD website 14 reported that during a sit in protest against the unprovoked killing of immigrants in the United States by white police, demonstration organizer Samuel mukuna called for “justice for our compatriots who were killed”.
The demonstrators put forward the following requirements to the US side that must be responded to:
First, we must severely punish the murderer of our countryman Patrick lyoya, the white American police, and uphold justice;
Second, the U.S. government must provide for the families of the victims, especially Loya’s widow and two children who have lost their father;
Thirdly, the United States government must shoulder its obligation to protect all blacks, especially those of Congolese descent living in its territory.
As one of the organizers of this demonstration, dekulacha is a young social activist and financial practitioner in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is a member of the non violent and non partisan youth movement “fighting for change” (Lucha) in the country. The movement was established in may2012 to raise people’s awareness of rights and obligations.
He calls himself a “Pan Africanist” and has so far organized more than 150 peaceful demonstrations with various themes.
The picture printed on the white T-shirt he was wearing was Loya. Loya, who was 26 at the time of his death, was an immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He moved to the United States with his family from Congo in 2014 and has lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan for 5 years.
On April 4 this year, he was shot and killed by white police in Grand Rapids during the process of law enforcement.
According to CNN at that time, the white policeman who killed Loya was named Christopher Schurr, who ordered Loya to stop on traffic duty on April 4.
After Loya stopped the car, Shure tried to restrain him with handcuffs. Loya wanted to resist, but knowing that Loya had no injurious weapons, Shure shot him twice in the back of the head with a stun gun and killed him on the spot.
The whole process was captured by people nearby. And published on the Internet, causing a large number of people’s dissatisfaction.
Shure’s lawyer argued that the Nissan car in Loya “looked suspicious” and matched the characteristics of a stolen vehicle. Moreover, Shure “believed” that the license plate did not match the vehicle, so it carried out “reasonable law enforcement” and rang the electric shock gun after the latter tried to escape.
However, det. Sgt. Aaron tubergen, a Michigan police officer in charge of investigating the case, gave diametrically opposite testimony, accusing Shure of firing electric shock guns at the back of the victim’s head after completely suppressing the victim.
Forensic autopsy showed that Loya was suspected of drunk driving. The subsequent investigation showed that Loya was burdened with three unexecuted court search warrants, and his driver’s license was revoked in March due to three seizures of controlled drug abuse within 10 years. However, it is unclear whether Shure knew all this when he intercepted Loya.
The residents of grand rapids are mainly black, while the police are mostly white. The relationship between the police and the people has always been very tense. After Loya was shot dead by a white policeman, protesters demonstrated for days and resonated in the United States, forcing Eric winstrom, the city’s police chief, to suggest that Shure be suspended indefinitely in early June.
On June 9, prosecutors in Michigan charged Shure with second-degree murder because he shot and killed an African American man Loya “without justifiable reason” during a law enforcement process.
The prosecutor gave a characterization that Shure, now 31, as a policeman, shot and killed Loya “without justifiable reasons such as self-defense”.
Citing the autopsy results, the lawyers representing the Loya family pointed out that Shure shot Loya at a close range in the back of the brain and executed him. Therefore, “Shure must take responsibility”.
Shure later surrendered to the police and was later detained in a prison outside Kent County.
On June 10, the mayor of Grand Rapids announced that Shure had been dismissed by the police, and Shure also waived its right to hold a hearing.
On the same day, Shure’s lawyer pleaded not guilty in court. He was later required to pay $100000 in bail and promised not to buy or hold firearms, not to drink alcohol or take drugs before trial.
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Why are all kinds of protests still being held by the local people in the United States where Loya was killed and by his compatriots in the Democratic Republic of the Congo?
Many people believe that this is the latest example of the police’s violent enforcement against blacks. In recent years, many black people in the United States have been killed by violent law enforcement by the police, triggering a wave of protests. This also highlights the long-standing systematic racial discrimination in American society.
On may25,2020, georgefloyd, an African American man in Minneapolis, Minnesota, died after being “knelt down” and suppressed by white police. Before his death, he repeatedly pleaded that he was “unable to breathe”.
In december2020, two incidents of police shooting and killing black men occurred in Columbus, Ohio. In April, 2021, an African American man, Dante Wright, was stopped in Brooklyn, Minnesota because his license plate expired, and was shot by a policewoman who “mistakenly used a pistol as a stun gun”
According to the statistics of the US “police violence map” website, in 2021 alone, at least 1124 people in the United States died of police violence, of which African Americans accounted for more than 20%. The proportion of African Americans in the total population of the United States is 13%.
Why are many people associated with the “Freud incident” when Loya was shot?
According to the analysis of many media, the main reason was that the police had knelt down on Loya and basically controlled him, but at this time, the police took out the law enforcement electric shock gun and shot at Loya’s head and the back of the head at close range. It is easy to think of a very cruel “execution”.
In addition, Shuer, a white male police officer who shot the gun, is an old hand who has worked in the police station for seven years. He is not a “rookie” policeman who is prone to make mistakes in panic.
Therefore, many people accuse the white police of “excessive use of force” and “racism”.
The incident has also triggered criticism and reflection from many parties, including American media and social media.
For example, shortly after the incident, the Washington Post published an article entitled “another black man was killed by the police – when is the end?” Editorial of.
The article wrote that two years have passed since georgefloyd shocked the United States with a video of a Minneapolis police officer having difficulty breathing under his knee. How could such a senseless and cruel death happen?
The same question is being asked again after a video showing another black man killed at the hands of another white policeman – held on the ground and shot in the back of his head – was made public. One must also ask another question: when is the end?
The article also referred to the question raised by the lawyer of the victim’s family, “how can anyone face convincing danger to their lives when they put others under their weight?”
On social media, many netizens posted messages that “the life of the black is also life” and “justice for Patrick Loya”. Some people ask why justice is absent in the United States at this time?
Huachunying, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, also said on twitter, “I can’t breathe. Again.”
“Fifty nine years after Martin Luther King’s speech on” I have a dream “, this dream has not yet come true.” Huachunying wrote.
03
A scholar who has long studied American issues said that if this is an accidental and random case, it may be because accidental factors collide and cause a regrettable tragedy.
If such cases have occurred repeatedly in different regions of a country for decades, and the momentum has not been curbed, it is a systematic and institutional problem.
Take Grand Rapids, where the case occurred, for example. Black residents here have long complained about police law enforcement and harassment, but they have also been ignored by the local government. This is not only the case in this city, but also in many parts of the United States.
This is why after the “Freud incident”, people have been calling for the reform of police law enforcement in the United States.
On May 25 this year, US President Biden signed an executive order. He said that on the second anniversary of the murder of georgefloyd by a policeman, the order will bring more accountability and effectiveness to the police and criminal justice.
This executive order will establish a national database to register police misconduct; Strive to carry out timely, thorough and powerful investigation; It is required to be equipped with a portable camera; It is forbidden to lock the throat and bind the carotid artery; Restrictions on the use of the police to enter the house without knocking and the establishment of new standards, etc.
The executive order is an instruction issued by the president of the United States to manage the operation of the federal government. Therefore, it only applies to federal agencies.
More people question why the “georgefloyd police Justice Act”, which was so vigorous at the beginning, has not been passed by the Senate two years later?
Because only when this bill is passed can it affect the police stations in all States and places.
The passage of the bill will strengthen accountability for police misconduct and reform police training and policies. Efforts to bring about change at the local and state levels have met with resistance at a time when concerns about the increase in violent crime have intensified. The bill was shelved because it fell into the political struggle between Republicans and Democrats.
It is the people at the bottom of American society and ethnic minorities who are ultimately hurt.
In recent years, violent law enforcement and fatal incidents against blacks have occurred frequently in the United States. The data provided by the independent investigation project “police violence map” shows that within one year after Freud was killed in 2020, 181 black people died in police enforcement.
According to the report released this year by the American Cities Alliance, African Americans enjoy only 73.9% of the equal treatment of whites. They lag far behind whites in education, social justice and citizen participation.
According to a survey conducted by the New York Times last fall, in the past five years, American police have killed more than 400 drivers who have not been chased for violent crimes with guns or knives. The New York Times found that the American police culture and court cases have seriously exaggerated the dangers of confrontation between police and drivers.
According to a database of the Washington Post, more than 250 people in the United States have been shot and killed by the police on duty this year, approaching the speed of 2020 and 2021. In these two years, more than 1000 people have been shot and killed by the police every year.
Since 2015, this database has recorded more than 5000 such shootings. According to the database, the proportion of black Americans shot by the police is more than twice that of white Americans.
Similarly, uncontrolled gun violence has become a “malignant tumor” in American society.
According to the statistics released on June 14 on the US “gun violence archives” website, as many as 328 shootings occurred in the US in the past 72 hours. So far this year, 19704 people have been killed in gun related incidents in the United States, including 745 minors.
The population of the United States is nearly 330million, and there are more than 400million guns in private ownership, with an average of about 120 guns per 100 people.
On June 11, demonstrations broke out in 450 cities across the United States to protest against the worsening problem of gun violence. According to US media reports, a large-scale rally against gun violence will be held in various parts of the United States on June 18.
The United States has always advocated “openness” and “inclusiveness”, claiming that everyone has the inalienable right to life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness, and that everyone can pursue and realize the “American Dream”. But in fact, this is a lie. The United States just wrote a blank check to African Americans, stamped it “insufficient funds” and returned it.
More than half a century has passed, and this situation remains the same.
On the one hand, African Americans are still struggling for equal rights with whites on the long road. The plight of African Americans is also a common problem faced by other ethnic minorities in the United States. Under the shadow of systematic racial discrimination such as differential treatment and violent law enforcement, ethnic minorities have to live in anxiety, injustice and fear.
On the other hand, under the obstacles of political polarization, social tearing and interest groups, gun violence in the United States has not been solved, but has become more and more intense. Mass shooting and campus shooting have occurred frequently, and gun suffering has become an “incurable disease” in American society. The victims are also the people at the bottom.
Therefore, the United States should devote more energy to solving the real problems for its own people.