Stop killing us. Our lives matter.

I was not planning on writing about this, but I could not stay silent after what we saw those past few days.

Black people have been enslaved, tortured, colonized, hanged, isolated, insulted. Today it continues because we are still persecuted. Nothing has changed.

On Monday night, Georges Floyd, a Black man, was murdered in Minneapolis, Minnesota by police officers who claimed to be making an arrest. He offered no resistance. He was alone in front of 4 policemen and was pinned down and suffocated by 3 of them while the fourth did nothing.

Before him, there were Breonna Taylor, Oscar Grant, Stephon Clark, Sean Reed, and many others in the US alone. It is not better in France. Let us recall Adama Traoré and Cédric Chouviat who were killed or Théodore Luhaka and Boubacar Dramé who were brutalized. By the police. Their names are way too many to mention them all. They were all Black or racialized men and women.

A few days ago, Camélia Jordana was saying that some men and women were being brutalized every day because of their skin colour. What was the answer? That these words were "false and shameful". The French government refuses to acknowledge the words police violence. By doing so, it spits on all the victims and their families. It chooses to close his eyes and cover its face instead of acknowledging the murder of men and women for no other reason than their skin colour.

It is obvious that we only know the story of a few of them. Imagine a world with no phones. These men and women would remain in the shadows. We would never have heard of them. We would never have been able to speak out, denounce and demand justice for all these people.And we know that despite the media coverage of police violence, guilty police officers do not go to prison. They do not get any punishment except a suspension from duty for a while. What is the message that the state and justice are sending out in this way? Black lives do not matter. People can insult us, beat us, brutalize us, kill us, and it will go unpunished. As I write this article, the police officers who murdered Georges Floyd have been fired...and that's it. Despite the number of videos, testimonies and protest messages on social networks, justice has not seen fit to arrest these men.

Some people will say that police officers are being attacked too, that they are doing their job and that we should understand them. To say that is to imply that the job of a police officer, a representative who is supposed to ensure the safety of citizens, is to injure or kill a man because he is Black. It is to minimize the suffering of thousands of people around the world, to minimize their struggle, and it is to obscure the problem of racism in society.

Do not come and tell us that a black person and a white person are equal before the law. Do not come and tell us that white privilege does not exist. Do not come and tell us that these crimes have nothing to do with the colour of the victims' skin.

Do not come and tell us that racism does not kill.

We black people, Afro-descendants, Arabs, bi-racial, have the right to live and as hundreds of people before us, we will fight for this right. We will fight for the imprisonment of policemen who kill. We will fight against this society that has decided that our lives do not count. We will fight to finally uphold this simple precept: all humans are born free and equal in law.

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Black Lives matter.

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Ella.