Kenyan youth and student activists have been arrested by the Ruto fascist authorities and detained at Nairobi Central Police Station. On May 11, youth and student members of the Revolutionary Students Commission under the Communist Party Marxist Kenya were arrested by fascist police during a protest against the “Africa Forward Summit” held at the University of Nairobi. The struggle of the youth and students against the imperialist plan for neo-colonial resource plunder, carried out at the University of Nairobi — a sacred place for student youth — is entirely justified. Yet the Ruto regime deployed even National Youth Service (NYS) personnel and Directorate of Criminal Investigations officers to infiltrate the gathering, intimidate participants through surveillance and harassment, and fascistically repress students who carried out a peaceful demonstration. This is a repetition of history: in 1997, during the dictatorship of Daniel arap Moi, Ruto mobilized militias to violently crush the student movement at the University of Nairobi. At Central Police Station, a symbolic site of fascist brutality, the students are now fully exposed to human rights violations and fascist repression.
The “Africa Forward Summit” is a vile scheme by decaying imperialism to continue dominating Africa’s vast resources and cheap labor. Having been disgracefully expelled from the AES countries by the anti-imperialist struggles of the people, French imperialism is now maneuvering to use Kenya as a new strategic foothold to impose “Neo-Colonialism 2.0.” The France–Kenya Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA), ratified in April 2026, is a typical unequal treaty that includes the stationing of French troops in Mombasa and extraterritorial privileges, openly expressing France’s hegemonic strategy to expand its influence into East Africa. Earlier, US imperialism designated Kenya a “Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA)” and has reduced the country into a “mercenary state” through large-scale military exercises such as “Justified Accord” and “Cutlass Express.” US imperialism, seeking monopolistic control over Africa’s critical minerals through the Lobito Corridor project, and French imperialism, seeking to seize African resources, are competing for interests on Kenyan soil, while the imperialist-fascist puppet Ruto brutally suppresses the masses who oppose imperialism and neoliberalism.
We must strengthen the world anti-imperialist front to defeat imperialism and fascism. In Nairobi, Kenya — which is being turned into an arena of imperialist rivalry and an aggressive forward operating base for imperialist hegemony — International Anti-Imperialist Conference was held on the 9th, followed by an International Colloquium on the 10th. Communists and anti-imperialists from around the world, including the members of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform — a solid coalition uniting more than 100 anti-imperialist political organizations worldwide — gathered together to scientifically analyze imperialism’s renewed attempts to recolonize Africa and concretely explore the unity of revolutionary Pan-Africanism, anti-imperialism, and internationalism. The mere fact that the Ruto fascist authorities mobilized their coercive and intelligence apparatuses in an attempt to obstruct this conference demonstrates how threatening internationalist unity and the world anti-imperialist front are to imperialist and fascist forces.
Youth and students must stand at the forefront of the struggle to strengthen the world anti-imperialist front. The youth and students of Kenya fought courageously against the Ruto fascist regime, the servant of imperialism, without fearing death. The Kenyan masses are responding to their struggle by taking to the streets. The World Anti-Imperialist Youth Platform will stand in unwavering solidarity with the youth and students of Kenya and with the masses, and will always remain together with the unity of anti-imperialist forces worldwide. Despite more than 600 years of colonial and imperialist domination and plunder, the African masses have never submitted and are continuing to fight imperialism at this very moment. The fiercer the fascist storm becomes, the stronger our anti-imperialist solidarity will grow, and the more powerful our anti-imperialist struggle will become. As history has shown, imperialism and fascism will inevitably be defeated. We will surely win.
Immediately release the detained students!
Down with imperialism!
Africa belongs to the African people!
Workers and peoples of all countries, unite!
May 12, 2026
World Anti-Imperialist Youth Platform
