RACIAL JUSTICE NETWORK STATEMENT OF SOLIDARITY WITH KENYA’S GEN Z UPRISING

The Racial Justice Network (UK) stands with Kenya’s courageous youth in their fight for liberation. We stand with all who fight against colonial systems. We stand with the oppressed everywhere.

July 11, 2025

The Racial Justice Network (RJN) – UK stands in unwavering solidarity with the heroic Gen Z and other youthful protesters of Kenya who, for over a year, have demonstrated extraordinary courage in challenging systems of oppression, neo – colonial extraction, and authoritarian violence. From the June 2024 uprising against the Finance Bill to Saba Saba commemorations on July 7 this year, Kenyan youth have shown the world what resistance looks like in the face of state terror.

We honour the memory of the over 100 people killed by Kenyan police since June 2024 to date, including 12-year-old Kennedy Onyango, Rex Kanyike Masai, Albert Ojwang, and the 31 protesters murdered during Saba Saba commemorations. Their sacrifice illuminates the path toward genuine liberation. We demand justice for those disappeared by a state that uses colonial-era tactics of terror to silence dissent.

This is Anti-Colonial Struggle

What began as protests against punitive taxation has evolved into a comprehensive challenge to the neo-colonial structures that continue to strangle Kenya 61 years after independence. The protesters’ analysis is crystal clear: the Finance Bill that sparked these uprisings was designed to meet International Monetary Fund requirements under a $3.6 billion programme that prioritises debt servicing to international creditors over the welfare of Kenyan people.

Kenyan youth understand what their government refuses to acknowledge—that Kenya remains trapped in colonial patterns of extraction, where resources flow outward to enrich global capital while the majority suffer. With 67% youth unemployment, 73% of citizens in severe financial distress, and the government spending more on debt servicing than all other budget items combined, the protesters are fighting for their very survival against a system designed to impoverish them.

Their chants of “IMF, World Bank, Stop the Modern Day Slavery” demonstrate a sophisticated understanding that transcends narrow electoral politics to challenge the fundamental structures of global economic domination.

Colonial Violence Lives On

The systematic brutality unleashed against these protesters exposes the continuity between colonial and post-colonial state violence. Kenya’s police, operating as “an occupying force rather than a public service,” employ the same tactics of torture, disappearance, and mass murder that the British colonial administration used to crush resistance. The use of live ammunition against unarmed protesters, the torture and killing of Albert Ojwang for social media criticism, and the complete impunity for state violence all demonstrate that independence changed the flag but not the fundamental character of the Kenyan state.

As our own organising has taught us, we cannot fight racism within borders. What happens in Kenya impacts us in the UK and vice versa. The police violence devastating Kenyan communities is part of the same global architecture of racialised state violence that terrorises Black communities worldwide, from London to Lagos, from Minneapolis to Mathare.

Western Hypocrisy and Complicity

The response of Western governments, particularly Britain, reveals the emptiness of their human rights rhetoric. On July 1, 2025—just six days before police killed 19 protesters during Saba Saba commemorations—UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed President Ruto to 10 Downing Street to sign a £1.5 billion “strategic partnership.” While Kenyan youth bled in the streets demanding accountability, the UK government celebrated investment deals and security cooperation with their killer.

This partnership, focused on trade, migration control, and “security cooperation,” represents everything the protesters are fighting against: the prioritisation of capital flows and elite interests over democratic rights and human dignity. The UK’s willingness to host, legitimise, and enrich a leader actively murdering his own people exposes British claims about supporting democracy as pure propaganda.

We demand to know: what “security cooperation” is Britain providing to Kenyan police? What training, equipment, and intelligence support enables this ongoing massacre? How can Britain claim to champion human rights while bankrolling state violence against those fighting for their liberation?

Our Solidarity is Anti-Imperial

As an organisation rooted in anti-colonial analysis and committed to international solidarity, RJN recognises the Kenyan protesters’ struggle as part of our own fight against systems of racial and economic oppression. Their resistance to IMF-imposed austerity connects directly to our work challenging the structural racism and economic violence that devastates Black communities in Britain.

The young Kenyans storming Parliament, facing down live ammunition, and maintaining their organising despite disappearances and killings, embody the same spirit of resistance that we celebrate in freedom fighters like Dedan Kimathi, Patrice Lumumba, WInnie Mandela, Thomas Sankara, among others. They are writing the next chapter in the long story of the African liberation struggle.

Their sophisticated analysis linking immediate economic grievances to colonial structures, their innovative use of technology for organisation, and their transcendence of ethnic divisions represent a new model of Pan-African resistance that offers lessons for liberation movements globally.

We assert :

That the UK government should recognise that investment deals with authoritarian leaders constitute complicity in state violence and should therefore suspend strategic partnership and security cooperation until state violence ends.

The Kenyan government should end police/state violence against protestors and intimidation of those who have dared to speak up and listen to its citizens.

For the International Community to understand that real stability comes from justice, not the violent suppression of legitimate demands. That debt crisis is a form of modern colonialism that requires cancellation not restructuring as per the reparations movement.

Offer support for Kenyan civil society over elite partnerships that perpetuate extraction and exploitation. Like an activist solidarity fund to support the activists who have been attacked and/or currently need practical support.

Moving Forward in Solidarity

Racial Justice Network – UK commits to amplifying Kenyan voices in our organizing, educational work, and advocacy. We will challenge British complicity in Kenyan state violence through our networks and partnerships. We call on all organizations committed to racial justice and anti-colonialism to join us in building the sustained international solidarity that this struggle deserves.

The courage of Kenya’s youth reminds us that liberation is possible when people refuse to accept injustice as inevitable. Their struggle is our struggle. Their victory will be our victory.

We echo their call: Kenya’s liberation cannot wait. Justice cannot wait. The time for real change is now.

Aluta Continua—The Struggle Continues!

For more information about RJN’s international solidarity work and how to support Kenya’s liberation struggle, contact us at info@racialjusticnetwork.co.uk . Join us in building the global anti-colonial movement that Kenya’s youth are courageously advancing.