On 12 September, three members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) in the United States were found not guilty of the most serious charge brought against them – that of being agents of the Russian government. The trumped-up charges against the Uhuru 3 were ostensibly prompted by the organisation’s consistent campaigning against NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine and the anti-Russia hysteria that accompanied it. They followed an FBI-led, military-style raid on the APSP and Uhuru Movement offices, as well as the homes of their leaders, in July 2022, seizing computers and documents. The six-day court hearing at Tampa federal court was packed with Uhuru 3 supporters every day. The prosecution called 12 FBI witnesses and two ‘expert witnesses’, all repeating hearsay, speculation and fabrications. The prosecution relied on lies, distortion of the laws and deliberately confusing instructions to the jury. The Uhuru 3 showed documents and videos to prove their more than 50-year history of fighting for black people’s rights and taking a principled anti-imperialist stance.
The charge of being foreign agents ties in with US propaganda of massive interference in US elections by Russia, Iran and China, and the labelling of pro-Palestinian activists as Iran’s ‘useful idiots’, in order to cast opposition to the imperialist state as an anti-US foreign initiative. Meanwhile, the New York
Times reported that the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs carried out a $2m campaign to influence US law-makers and the public to support the Gaza genocide, along with AIPAC spending $100m in the run-up to the US elections, all without any interference by the FBI or Department of Justice.
The Uhuru 3 were found guilty on the lesser charge of ‘conspiracy to commit an offence against the United States’, which carries a maximum sentence of five years, which they will appeal.
The persecution by the US state of the Uhuru 3 is part of a long history of state racism, violence, murder and frame-ups of black activists fighting back against US imperialism and racism. Communists and progressives must support all fightbacks against the state’s criminalisation of protest and democratic rights. An injury to one is an injury to all!
You can donate to the Uhuru 3 defence campaign at https://handsoffuhuru.org
David Hetfield
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 302 October/November 2024
