It’s no crime to move from one place to another – but it is being punished by death

by Sam Doherty

Jimmy Mubenga was killed because he was a migrant. He committed the mortal sin of moving from one place to another. This crime was punishable by death. Jimmy Mubenga left behind a wife and five children – the youngest nine months old. Jimmy Mubenga’s life was of no value to the government that had him deported, or the private security firm that executed him, Jimmy Mubenga’s killers, just like Eric Garner’s, just like Michael Brown’s, walk free.

There seems something almost ghostly in the fact that both Mubenga and Garner shared the same dying words. ‘I can’t breathe’ has become a rallying cry for solidarity actions across the globe. The slogan articulates that these protests are about the right to exist, or more specifically, the right of black people to exist. The following quote from Frantz Fanon is both inspiring and disturbing in its prescience: ‘We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.’ These words, uttered over fifty years ago, are just as applicable today as they were then. People’s very right to exist is still determined on the basis of skin colour.

The obvious connection to be made between the three men’s deaths is the fact that they were killed at the hands of the state with no retribution for their killers. It is important that in these all too common instances we maintain that without justice, there can be no peace. However, we would be ourselves guilty of an injustice if we allowed our intervention to end there.

Naomi Klein’s excellent piece for The Nation illustrates the link between the state’s indifference to black lives and its shameful responses to natural disasters and global climate change. Just as the ruling class denies the right of black people to live peaceful and fulfilling lives in the West, it devastates their living conditions in the Global South. Increasing sea levels will make uninhabitable large swathes of communities across the globe. The ‘Black Lives Matter’ slogan brings into question not only state violence, but also the West’s destruction of the planet and the indifference towards the black lives that are threatened as a result of it.

In October, home secretary Theresa May announced the withdrawal of UK support from the Mare Nostrum search and rescue campaign in the Mediterranean. Mare Nostrum saved approximately 150,000 people from drowning in the previous year. The British government’s decision will kill people. Thanks to our government, thousands of black people will drown in the Mediterranean Sea. Here again, black lives are shown not to matter.

Jimmy Mubenga’s death at the hands of immigration control’s hired thugs is a sorry illustration of what it means to be a migrant in Britain today. The continuing anti-migrant scapegoating by mainstream politicians isn’t merely posturing, it kills people. It kills people forced to stay in countries devastated by climate change and war. It kills people who try to escape their conditions, only to die on the journey. And, in cases like Jimmy Mubenga’s, it kills people when they’re already here. Black lives matter and it is our duty to ensure that our governments recognise that. Doing this requires not only that we ensure can be no peace without justice, but also that there can be no justice until we have no borders.

Left Unity supports a No Borders policy. There will be a demonstration in favour of No Borders today, Thursday 18 December, at 18.30 at the Home Office, SW1P 4DF.