In a moment of silence, spectators bowed their heads Friday night at the Sample Gates to memorialize the loss of African lives due to human rights violations across the continent.
IU students and Black student groups attended the #AfricaIsBleeding candlelight vigil for Africa. The vigil sought to remember lives lost and commemorate African nations facing social and political strife.
Though the vigil was organized by individual students and not one group specifically, organizations such as the IU NAACP, African Student Association and Black Student Union helped to facilitate and showed support. The vigil aimed to recognize human rights violations including government corruption, police brutality, child labor, exploitation of natural resources, child trafficking, tribalism and genocide.
Students held various signs at the vigil. Some read “Congo is bleeding” and “#EndSARS,” referring to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, a police agency in Nigeria accused of police brutality, ill treatment and extrajudicial executions of citizens.
The vigil highlighted the countries Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe but also addressed Africa as a whole. Junior Mariame Sow, IU NAACP co-president and philanthropy chairman for IU’s ASA, said it was important students show support and shed light on underrepresented issues around the world.
“Black liberation is a global struggle,” she said. “With child trafficking and political corruption, African leaders won’t do anything until there’s awareness, so what kind of Africans would we be in our privileged places in the Western world in not saying anything?”
Sow and other Black student leaders outlined tragedies specific to each country during the vigil and explained ways they affect not only local citizens, but also students and descendants of those nations across the world at IU.
“Africa entirely as a whole is bleeding, suffering and is being over-exploited,” Sow said.
Senior Salina Tesfagiorgis is the president of IU’s ASA. She said one of the goals of the vigil was not only to commemorate, but also to enlighten the student body.
“We hope that they understand that Africa is a diverse area going through a lot,” she said. “We just hope to continue dehomogenizing this image of Africa but also spread awareness because these are human lives and we just need to remember that.”
Many speakers became emotional while characterizing some of the tragedies occurring in their homelands. Junior Ramatou Soumare spoke against political corruption in Guinea by President Alpha Condé and his citizens’ complaints of lack of improved infrastructure, interference with parliamentary elections and ethnic cleansing, among other detriments.
“Things are being censored, but also I just feel like there’s such a lack of compassion for the loss of Black lives,” she said. “These are issues that have been going on for years and most of them are as a result of colonialism.”
Soumare said in order to grow compassion for the Black community, she encourages other students to show support by attending events and vigils like the one on Friday.
“We’re constantly talking about these issues but it doesn’t really get anywhere if we’re the only ones showing up to talk about it,” she said. “I encourage my white peers to come to things like this, to listen to the Black people in your classes, to listen to the Black people on campus. Just show up more and show that you care.”
