On Sept. 7, Booker Ngesa Omole, the National Vice Chairperson of the Communist Party of Kenya, was detained and arrested at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport while aboard a Qatar Airlines flight to Beijing. He has been calling for the resignation of Kenyan President William Ruto for abusing his power and making activists (not just communists) disappear.
Communist Party of Kenya
Comrade Booker was detained for several hours and released, but the Kenyan government seized his passport and other travel documents. He has been charged with “Incitement to Violence.” This could have reached a tragic ending, as the Ruto regime has made others disappear, and is still an example of a bourgeois
state cracking down on and punishing revolutionary Marxist-Leninists.
The Communist Party of Kenya went through a series of struggles in order to become what it is today. The Marxist-Leninist faction in the Social Democratic Party of Kenya won the leadership of the party and, in 2019, changed its name to the Communist Party of Kenya. The CPK announced that it was a communist party and the vanguard of the Kenyan proletariat and peasantry.
After getting the Kenyan regime to recognize it as a legitimate party, the CPK acknowledged two important things: 1. pre-revolutionary reforms aid the working class and peasantry and should be supported. 2. The party recognizes that its mission as the vanguard of the Kenyan people is to use revolutionary tactics to overthrow the Kenyan capitalist class and the imperialists, represented by William Ruto today.
Comrade Booker, in his autobiographical work, “Communist Party of Kenya and Manifestations of Class Struggle in Kenya,” said: “Kenya is a dictatorship, with a few wealthy people dominating all spheres of life. Capital is the dominating factor, with money, everything is for sale! Even people!”
With this fact in mind, Comrade Booker has fought the Kenyan big bourgeoisie, and for this the state repressive forces are trying to silence him. He acknowledged that he was lucky in that the police did not “disappear” him, an unfortunate risk of being a vocal communist living under a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
While the revolution is much bigger than just one person, Marxist-Leninists acknowledge the importance individual people can have in the experience and course of a revolution. It is one of the responsibilities of communists worldwide to demand that Comrade Booker’s life and freedom be maintained and that the Kenyan state keeps its hands off him.
The International Relations Committee of Workers World Party calls for the Kenyan state to drop the charges against Comrade Booker and allow him to live freely. We support the Kenyan people’s demand for the resignation of Ruto and all anti-proletarian/anti-peasant forces in Kenya.
Free Comrade Booker!
Liberate all political prisoners in Kenya and everywhere!
Build a Workers World!
Sources:
- Communist Party of Kenya Charter
- The Manifesto of the Communist Party of Kenya
- Why We Changed Our Name From the Social Democratic Party of Kenya to the
Communist Party of Kenya
- Communist Party of Kenya and Manifestations of Class Struggle in Kenya by Comrade Booker Ngesa Omole