LONDON – One of the best known militants of the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK was seriously injured in the head in an armed attack and is now in critical condition. Victim of the alleged attack, which took place early Sunday in Southwark, a district of London just south of the Thames, is Sasha Johnson, 26, leader of the Taking the Initiative Parti, dubbed by the national media “the Black Panther of Oxford” for its radical positions.
The attack follows “numerous death threats as a result of her political activism,” says a statement from the party led by the young woman. “It is with great sadness that we inform you that Sasha was brutally attacked and suffered a head injury,” the statement continues on the movement’s Facebook page. “He is currently in intensive care and fighting for his life.” Scotland Yard confirmed there was a shooting in the area and that investigations are ongoing, but without providing details on the identity of the victim or confirming whether it is an attack or a common violence. Police report that there would have been gunshots near a house where a party was in progress and there is no evidence that it was a targeted attack and report that they have no information on threats received by Sasha Johnson.
There have been no arrests yet. The police asked the residents and public premises of the neighborhood, where the Shard, the tallest skyscraper in the capital, designed by Renzo Piano, and the popular food market of Borough Market, but also poorer streets and of urban decay, to collaborate with testimonies and images from CCTV to try to reconstruct what happened.
A graduate of Oxford Brookes University, mother of three and owner of a small restaurant in London, the Oxford Kitchen, which also functions as a mobilization center, Sasha Johnson is known for appearing at demonstrations in military-style uniform, wearing a black beret in head, and for the uncompromising line of his proposals, such as the creation of a list of people guilty of racial crimes to be excluded from jobs similar to the list of those who have committed sexual abuse. The “Black Panther of Oxford” also distinguished itself for comparing the police to the Ku Klux Klan, urging the war against capitalism and inciting the liberation of Palestine with slogans denounced as anti-Semitic by the Jewish breaking latest news, including “do not let the Jews shut your mouth “.
It came to the fore last summer in the wake of demonstrations in England in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, a galaxy of acronyms that has given birth to rival groups and small groups in the UK. “Sasha has always fought for blacks and the injustices that surround the black community,” says a spokesperson. Coincidentally, this very morning an Observer article quoted confidential intelligence sources that an attack by the far right in Britain is only a matter of time.
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