Moses Kabagambe, who worked in Rio de Janeiro as a daily newspaper, was beaten to death on a beach on January 24 at the age of 24.
Le Monde
Hundreds of people demonstrated, Saturday, February 5, in Brazil to seek justice for a young Congolese beaten to death on a beach of Rio de Janeiro, a drama that mobilized many personalities.
Pancags with his portrait and slogans against racism and xenophobia, the protesters gathered around the beach bar of the prized neighborhood of Barra da Tijuca where Moses Kabagambe, who worked there as a daily day, was killed on January 24 at the age of 24.
“This is the death of a stranger who was our brother, because he was black. We are here to show our resistance, to show that we will not let impunish what happened” , told the France-Presse Agency (AFP) Bruna Lira, a 19-year-old student wearing a t-shirt on which we could read “anti-racist”.
Dressed in White, Congolese immigrants danced and sung during the event with which relatives of Moses Kabagambe, arrived in Brazil in 2011 to flee violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Events were also held in Sao Paulo, south, and Brasilia, the capital, as well as in Salvador and Belo Horizonte. In the capital, the protesters gathered before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and threw a red liquid on the sidewalk, before wiping it with linens: “Black blood, not a drop of more,” proclaimed signs.
Indignation wave
Moses Kabagambe was brutally attacked by at least three men after an argument who, according to the family, began when he claimed a backlog of the manager. Police stopped three people involved in smoking and investigating the mobile crime.
The images of a security camera show the moment when men immobilized Moses and hit him several times with sticks, even after his fall on the ground, while he does not oppose the slightest resistance. His death caused a wave of indignation on social networks, many artists, sportsmen and his family demanding justice, among whom the singer Caetano Veloso or the footballer Gabriel Barbosa.
“It’s very unfair because the money he won by working here, Moses used him to help his family. He was a doller, I knew him,” said AFP a Congolese friend of the victim, Chico Mayamba. Brazil “gives value only to foreigners with clear eyes and who speak English. If it’s a black that came from Africa to try to grow here, he has no value,” lamented Douglas Alencar, the coordinator at Rio de Janeiro of the iPad, a militant institute for the defense of democracy, during the event in this city.
Moses Kabagambe lived with his mother and others from his children in Madureira, a poor neighborhood of Rio. The Mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes, announced on Saturday that the place of the assassination would become a memorial in tribute to Moses Kabagambe and the Congolese culture, and that the management of the new bar would be entrusted to his family.