Rastafari, Vedanta & De Beers: Pictures from protests I covered on Friday 1st August 2014.
August 1st is Emancipation Day, celebrating the effective date of the abolition of slavery across the British Empire in 1834, and 2014 also marked the centenary of the foundation of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) by Marcus Garvey and Amy Ashwood Garvey in Jamaica in 1914.
In Brixton I photographed a rally by Rastafaris preparing to march to Parliament to demand reparations for the slave trade. I left to go to Lincoln Inn’s Fields to a protest outside the AGM of mining group Vedanta, responsible for killings and environmental destruction in various countries around the world.
Finally in Piccadilly campaigners were outside De Beers asking people to boycott diamonds cut and polished in Israel which fund war crimes against Palestinians.
Rastafari Demand Reparations For Slave Trade
Windrush Square, Brixton
On the centenary of the foundation by Marcus Garvey of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Rastafaris met at Brixton to march to Parliament demanding reparations for the descendants of those taken from Africa by the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Demands for international reparations have been increasingly made in recent years, some for huge sums. As I wrote:
“In 2004, a group of Jamaican Rastafari movement groups argued that European countries, particularly Britain, should pay £72.5 billion to resettle 500,000 Jamaican Rastafarians in Africa, but the British government rejected their claim. Other claims have been lodged in 2007 by Guyana, in 2011 by Antigua and Barbuda.”
No government has yet agreed to any financial reparations to the descendants of slaves or the countries affected. The British Government at the time of abolition paid out huge sums over many years to the owners of slaves – equivalent to 40% of the national budget – and this payment was only completed in 2015. Among those who have received payments were powerful British families, including current business and political elites in the United Kingdom.
The event go off to a slow start with drumming and dances and then some speeches. It was still continuing when I left to go elsewhere and I missed the march which only began an hour and a half later.
More on My London Diary at Rastafari demand reparations for slave trade.
Vedanta Told ‘End Your Killing’
Lincoln Inn’s Fields
The protest on the opposite side of the road from the Vedanta AGM was organised by Foil Vedanta who say:
“Vedanta Resources is a FTSE 250 British-Indian mining company guilty of thousands of deaths, environmental devastation, anti union action, corruption and disdain for life on earth. They have become one of the most hated and contentious companies in the world.”
A number of the protesters had bought shares in the company so that they could go into the AGM and ask questions while others continued the protest outside.
As well as protesting Foil Vedanta have also carried out a great deal of research into the activities of Vedanta and is subsidiary companies. These include Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) in Zambia which has poisoned thousands of people causing ongoing birth deformities in major pollution spills in 2006 and 2010. They had claimed to be unable to pay their fines or their tax bill while actually making around around $500 million/year.
Protests against Vedanta here where the company is listed and on a much larger scale in India and elsewhere where they operate have so far stopped Vedanta from destroying the Niyamgiri mountain in Odisha, sacred to the indigenous Dongria Kondh. The protests in London led the company to decide to de-list in 2018. They have also attempted unsuccessfully to de-list from Indian stock exchanges.
More at Vedanta told ‘end your killing’.
Boycott Israeli Blood Diamonds
De Beers, Piccadilly
Protesters at De Beers in Piccadilly asked people to boycott diamonds cut and polished in Israel which contribute around a billion dollars every year to the Israeli military and security industries and fund Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.
More pictures at Boycott Israeli Blood Diamonds.
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