Wed 03 June 2020:
Officials in Africa have expressed concern over developments in the U.S. following the death of George Floyd, the black American man killed in police custody in the city of Minneapolis last week. The head of the African Union described Floyd’s death as an act of “murder.”
In Addis Ababa, African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat took the U.S. government to task over the death of Floyd. Going a step further, the former Chadian prime minister used a powerful word that many protesters are using to describe Floyd’s death: Murder.
Meanwhile, U.S. embassies in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo issued rare statements of concern over Floyd’s May 25 death and called for accountability after the arrest of a police officer on third-degree murder and manslaughter charges.
This week, as fires burned across the U.S., South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party also weighed in in the mounting crisis, saying the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor show that “American society places a perilously low value on black lives.”
Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, said in a statement, “It cannot be right that, in the 21st century, the United States, this great bastion of democracy, continues to grapple with the problem of systemic racism.”
Kenyan opposition leader and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga said he was praying “that there be justice and freedom for all human beings who call America their country.”
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