A person using a flamethrower on Saturday 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. Security footage released by the team shows the driver of a white Honda sedan pull up outside the group’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, remove a flamethrower from the trunk and shoot a tower of fire at the flag flying about 9 meters above the ground . The group says the man stopped when a worker inside the building yelled at him. The video shows him putting the flamethrower back in the trunk and then walking away. A photo provided by the group shows the flag with a large hole. St. Petersburg police said they are investigating the fire and working to identify a suspect. The Uhuru Movement is part of the African People’s Socialist Party, which says it “unites the African people as one people for liberation, social justice, self-reliance and economic development.” Akile Akai, the group’s director of mobilization and propaganda, said the attack is in the same vein as the May killing of 10 black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket. Police say the suspect arrested in the Buffalo massacre is a white nationalist. Akai said such attacks are caused by the decline of a “social system and facade of normality based on oppression, colonialism and exploitation”.
