Togo youths: 'Send us guns'

Togo youths: 'Send us guns' - Feb 16, 2005

"After Eyadema's February 5 death was followed by the abrupt appointment by the army of his son Faure Gnassingbe, Togo's new generation of protesters is dismissing people-power, grass-roots solidarity and all that.

They want guns, and lots of them."

This is what happens when the powers that be let a catastrophic and despotic regime rob its people of hope. The countries that claim the high-moral ground on such issues as democracy and human rights (USA, France et al) have allowed Eyadema to rule ruthlessly over Togo for 38 YEARS!!!! For most of those years, they supported and upheld him as a friend of the West. And during those years, the Togolese went on suffering, just like people in Togo, Uganda, Congo (Zaire), Congo (Brazzaville), Chile (under Pinochet), Saudi Arabia and several Middle Eastern countries. When people like Lumumba, Allende, Mossadeq or today Chavez in Venezuela, stand up for the rights of their people to actually benefit from the wealth of their countries, they are given death-threat wielding epithets: Communist, Regressive, anti-globalization. And then people wonder - in total shock! - where terrorism comes from...