Italian settlers beat nonwhites with impunity under fascist rule

Evidence

One day at work in the restaurant, Osman observed Cesare Buffo, former commissioner and a medical doctor in Afgoi who became a plantation owner, mercilessly beat an old Arab watchman called Nucmaan. Nucmaan’s crime was that he had not collected bags of acacia seeds from the garden of the governor’s villa. The old man passively accepted the beating. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 1169

Categorization

• SEED: A concrete shock-moment that could anchor an essay on how colonial racial violence converts bystanders into future political actors.