NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenyan and American protesters knelt outside the United States Embassy in Nairobi one morning last month, outraged at George Floyd’s killing and the racism and brutality they saw across the Atlantic. But they were also furious about police abuses at home, in Kenya. In the large slum of Kibera, in front of a large mural of Mr. Floyd, residents chanted, “Stop killing us.” In front of Parliament, youths carried caskets to protest extrajudicial killings. “The image of George Floyd’s death was so visceral, so violent,” said Lilly Bekele-Piper, an Ethiopian-American who lives in Kenya and brought her four children to the protests. “People came out because they recognize that violence in their own communities.”Outrage over Mr. Floyd’s death has rippled throughout the continent, with Africans invoking the Black Lives Matter movement to call attention to abuses in their own countries and demand that the police be held to account.

Source: International New York Times July 03, 2020 15:45 UTC