From A Verdade
Journal of the workers in the service of the struggle for socialism
August 2005

Tony Blair’s Police Kill Brazilian

On July 22, in the London subway, a Brazilian youth, Jean Charles de Menezes, 27 years old, was killed by British police. This was an action of unlimited violence. Jean was killed by police in civilian clothes with eight shots at point-blank range, seven of them in the head.

He was not being sought by the police, had not committed any crime, and was living legally in England. According to witnesses, he was not carrying anything and was confused with a "suicide bomber" only because he was wearing a heavy jacket. The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, justified the murder by saying that "when we are faced with someone who could explode a bomb, the policy of shoot to kill is fully justified."

Like Jean Charles, thousands of other Brazilians are forced to leave the country fleeing violence and unemployment, deceived by the dream of a better life abroad. The truth is that in England as well as the United States or any imperialist country, Latin Americans, Africans, Arabs and Asians are treated with prejudice and discrimination. They are always employed in the worst jobs, and with practically no labor or social rights.

The British government, in an official note, said that it will continue the struggle against terrorism and will maintain its tactic of "shoot to kill." But, what moral right does the English government have to speak against terrorism? What can one call what England, together with the USA, is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? How can one characterize a government that summarily murders a young worker, without any investigation?

The real terrorism is that which affects millions of people in the whole world with unemployment, hunger and violence. And this terrorism is sponsored by the governments of the imperialist countries in order to maintain the profits of the big monopolies and to appropriate the sources of raw materials of the poor countries. The arrogance and violence with which the murder of Jean Charles was treated by the English government only shows the inhumanity of this system.

Humberto Lima

Click here to return to Brazil Index