International Human Rights Day, 10th December, commemorates the day in 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This has become politically controversial here in the UK, as our government, while claiming still to be in support of the declaration is rather noisily and busily trying to find ways to get around some of its consequences. There seem to be some groups – such as prisoners and suspected terrorists – that they don’t feel qualify for human rights.
The Syria Peace & Justice group were told they can’t protest directly outside the UNHCR offices.
But this is a pilgrimage not a protest they told the commissionaire.
As Herman and Chomsky pointed out 25 years ago in their classic book ‘Manufacturing Consent‘ there are ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ victims in the eyes of our politicians and dominant media, and many in power would like to restrict these universal rights only to those they consider ‘worthy’.
Given the political climate it perhaps is unsurprising that International Human Rights Day passes unobserved officially in the UK and those who rely on mainstream media would be totally unaware of it.
But the Syria Peace & Justice group chose the day to try to highlight the desperate situation in Syria and to call for an end to all human rights abuses there. They began the day by making a pilgrimage around as many as possible of the embassies of countries who are in some way or other involved in Syria, as well as the UN High Commission for Refugees offices and our own government offices and ended with a candlelit vigil on the pavement outside the Syrian Embassy. It wasn’t a huge protest – the group is a small London-based grass-roots one only formed a couple of months ago, which includes people of various nationalities and backgrounds united in their desire to see peace and justice. But many others would support their aims.
Because of the large number of embassies and other places involved the pilgrimage was split into two groups who met up in late afternoon outside the US embassy. This presented my first dilemma in covering the event, as I couldn’t split myself in two! I decided to start with the group at the UNHCR as it was the UN’s day, and to go with them at least as far as Downing St and the Foreign Office, before trying to join the second group who had started in Kensington.
The Syria Peace & Justice group were joined by several others as they posed in front of the Houses of Parliament.
At Downing St, one of the pilgrims had permission to take their letter in, but they arrived late, and had to wait for a suitable gap, and rather than waiting with her I went on with the rest of the group to take photographs outside the foreign office and in Parliament Square. From there I took the tube to Hyde Park Corner and rang the leader of the second group to find out where they were. They were heading for the Iraqi embassy, but by the time I got arrived there had already moved on. Two buses later I finally caught up with them outside the former Iranian Embassy which was closed by William Hague threw out the Iranian Embassy in 2011 after the UK’s embassy in Tehran was attacked and looted. It now appears to be a part of the Omani embassy.
At the Kuwaiti embassy they let someone in to deliver the letter calling for peace and human rights.
I walked down with the group to the Kuwaiti and French embassies and then left them to go to the US Embassy where I found the other group had arrived. Taking pictures there was a little tricky as it was now dark, and they were in a particularly badly lit area. I tried both using ISO 3200 and available light and adding flash, but neither worked too well with the pilgrims being rather spread out. You can see these and more pictures from earlier in the two pilgrimages at Human Rights Day Pilgrimages for Syria.
There was another event I wanted to cover a couple of miles away and I left them to take the tube there, returning for the candlelit vigil an hour and a half later outside the Syrian embassy.
Flash enabled me to bring out the Buddhist monk in a dark background area.
Candles provide enough light to illuminate a very small area, and the pavement outside the embassy had a little ambient light from the street lighting, but it wasn’t really enough to fill in the shadows. I got the best results by just adding a little flash fill, using ISO3200 with the candles as the main light source and a mix of flash and ambient in the shadow areas.
Peace pilgrim ‘Earthian’, a “citizen of the earth” made a peace pilgrimage to the Middle East on foot without a passport
I used the built-in wide-flash diffuser screen on the flash and also the small white bounce card, generally angling the flash head up at 45 degrees. Where there were subjects close to the camera on one side, I angled the flash away from them to reduce the coverage (even with the wide-flash adapter there is a lot of fall off at the edges with the 16mm.)
I worked with shutter priority, setting a speed of between 1/25 and 1/60s (with a certain random element from my habitual finger-fiddling) and adjusting both exposure bias and more often flash level to get the results I wanted, checking on the rear screen. The ambient levels varied considerably in different areas of the vigil, and the headlights of cars driving by also occasionally added a contribution.
More pictures from the candlelit vigil at Human Rights Day Candlelit Vigil for Syria.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
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