A man set fire to a Pan-African flag flying on a pole outside the headquarters of the Uhuru Movement, a Black international socialist group based in Florida on Saturday. A security video released by the group shows the driver of a white Honda sedan pulling up outside the group’s St Petersburg headquarters, removing a flamethrower from the trunk and shooting a tower of fire at the flag flying about 30ft (9 meters) above the ground.
As reported by The Guardian, the group said the man stopped when a worker inside the building yelled at him. St Petersburg police said they were investigating the fire and working to identify a suspect. The video shows the man putting the flamethrower back in the trunk and then driving away. A photo supplied by the group shows the flag with a large hole. Police say the suspect arrested in the Buffalo massacre is a white nationalist.
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The Uhuru Movement is part of the African People’s Socialist Party, whose stated aim is “uniting African people as one people for liberation, social justice, self-reliance and economic development”. The group’s director of agitation and propaganda, Akile Akai, said the attack was in the same vein as the May killing of 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket.
Akai said a “social system and facade of normalcy based on oppression, colonialism and exploitation” cause such attacks.
(with inputs from agencies)
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