Police Brutality: #EndSARS
Tags: Nigeria, Current African Affairs, Endsars, Police Brutality

SARS — China

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory disease caused by a SARS-associated coronavirus. It was first identified at the end of February 2003 during an outbreak that emerged in China and spread to 4 other countries World Health Organization (Accessed:23 November 2020)

The very first time I saw the #EndSARS hashtag, I genuinely thought that we were about to get hit with another pandemic, I seriously thought it was a possible resurgence of the SARS virus that emerged in China all those years ago, I mean, with COVID-19 giving us no break, can you honestly blame me?

Anyways, my initial erroneous presumption that SARS stood for Severe Acute Respiratory Disease, was the primary reason, that I decided NOT to open the hashtag when I first stumbled upon it, of course I absolutely regret making that decision now.

SARS — South Africa

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) is the nation’s tax collecting authority. Established in terms of the South African Revenue Service Act 34 of 1997 as an autonomous agency, we are responsible for administering the South African tax system and customs service. South African Revenue Services (Accessed: 23 November 2020)

The second time I saw the hashtag, I decided to click on it, while thinking,

“Have South African Politicians looted SARS or something?”

In South Africa, SARS is our revenue service, our tax collector. No one likes tax collectors, or the tax man all that much and government corruption, so I was kind of reluctant to find out what was going on, but eventually I did, and it was far worse than I had imagined…

SARS — Nigeria

SARS from the #EndSARS movement stands for Special Anti-Robbery Squad, in Nigeria. It is a crime-fighting unit that seemingly turned into some form of violent policing regime, which targeted unarmed youth.

According to Wikipedia:

SARS officers have been alleged to profile young Nigerians, mostly males, based on fashion choices, tattoos and hairstyles. They were also known to mount illegal road blocks, conduct unwarranted checks and searches, arrest and detain without warrant or trial, rape women, and extort young male Nigerians for driving exotic vehicles and using laptops and iPhones. Nigerians have shared both stories and video evidence of how officers of SARS engaged in kidnapping, murder, theft, rape, torture, unlawful arrests, humiliation, unlawful detention, extrajudicial killings and extortion of Nigerian citizens. A large section of the victims of the abuses of SARS have been young male Nigerians. Wikipedia (Accessed: 23 November 2020)

The aforementioned quote alone emphasizes the inhumanity that is experienced by the youth of Nigeria and no further words need to be written by me, because I am currently disgusted by the clear violation of the rights of the Youth.

If it weren’t for social media, would we even begin to guess the extent at which our fellow youthful compatriots are being abused by people who are suppose to be protecting them?

Anyways, police brutality against unarmed black youth is honestly a pandemic at this point. We have the Black Americans protesting against a seemingly white supremacist policing regime through the #BlackLivesMatter movement. In South Africa, we had episodes of police brutality during the #FeesMustFall movement, where they harmed unarmed students, also South Africa’s Apartheid regime is a historical reference point when it comes to police brutality against unarmed youth.

But, all these references of police brutality shall be reserved for another day, another post, for now, we stand with the Youth of Nigeria in their call to #EndSARS.

#EndSARS