On 3rd of March this year, a lot of mass protests started in Senegal. The people of Senegal are demonstrating because they are fed up with French imperialism. The masses are accusing the government of being puppets of the French ex-colonial rulers and are giving vent to their anger against French imperialism.
They loot French factories, supermarket chains and destroy construction sites of French companies. French people living there were evacuated and the military was called in to protect them, and especially imperialist capital, and did not hesitate to move in with tanks. The demonstrators reacted to this by arming themselves and resisting with weapons, and guerrilla warfare was launched against the military in the working class districts of Dakar.
French media try to negate the role of French imperialism in this conflict and label these riots as a "Senegalese-Senegalese" affair. This is justified by the fact that the "democratically" elected government is allowing French companies to take over the market, and this has led to a conflict between the government and the opposition, which clearly opposes it. The leader of the opposition, MP Ousmane Sonko, who took part in the demonstrations and riots, was first charged by the Senegalese state with incitement to riot and then arrested for allegedly raping a masseuse, but was later released in the hope that this would calm the riots.
Now, the Senegalese state has passed a new law to justify its repressive measures. This defines acts committed intentionally in connection with an individual or collective enterprise or movement to intimidate the population and seriously disturb order as terrorism. And these "terrorist acts" can be punished with life imprisonment. The masses reacted to this with protests, to which the state naturally responded with repression by the military.
It is obvious that now, due to the economic crisis and the additional burden of the pandemic, the contradictions have intensified enormously everywhere and will continue to intensify. It hits the masses the most, both in the imperialist countries, but also especially the biggest and broadest masses of the world, the masses of the oppressed nations. Those who are particularly poor and are most oppressed and exploited by imperialism, who are feeling the economic crisis most acutely and who, in addition, are suffering the most losses due to the corona virus. The example of Senegal is a good illustration of what the intensification of contradictions leads to. The oppressed peoples fight for their independence, the more they fight, the more repression and exploitation the imperialists put up against them. This in turn leads to even stronger contradictions and so the imperialists dig their own grave.
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