>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

Climate Reality

Together with several other photographers we spent some time looking for this protest – and met protesters who were also having the same problem, but finally we found it, not actually at Tate Modern where the Facebook event page had said, but hidden from there behind some greenery at the edge of the busy riverside path in front of the gallery. I think it had only just started, and certainly quite a few others arrived later than us, perhaps having had a similar problem to us. We’d actually walked close to it earlier on our way to the Tate, but it had been hidden on the edge of a larger crowd of tourists listening to some busking musicians.

Like many protests it was rather a matter of preaching to the converted, and there were some good and worthy speakers, but perhaps a little lacking in popular appeal, but it was a part of a worldwide action, and seems to have been set up mainly to provide a photograph to send to the international web site. At the end of the rally those at the protest came out of the bushes to stand in front of Tate Modern and be photographed from a high balcony looking down at the crowd, who had been asked to wear yellow for the event.

I hope the photographer on the balcony got a decent picture, though I suspect it wasn’t too impressive.

Certainly it didn’t work that well from the ground, though I did my best, trying to show we were in London by including St Paul’s in the background, but getting the whole crowd in needed a very wide angle of view and this made the cathedral rather small; it was only a little better when I cut off a few at the edges. There was a similar problem when the crowd were asked to turn through 180 degrees for a picture with the former power station behind them, with its high brick wall and tall chimney.

Of course I’d been using St Paul’s in the background while I was taking pictures of the protest and the speakers, but a longer lens had made it more visible, though of course not showing the size of the crowd – a few hundred people. By the time they were invited to walk up onto the Millennium footbridge I think quite a few had decided to leave. Probably the best viewpoint was as they came up the slope, but they did so in dribs and drabs. And once on the bridge it was difficult to photograph them protesting along it. I lent out with my camera, strap wrapped securely around my arm and tried a few pictures, but framing was tricky as I couldn’t see either viewfinder or rear screen. The frame at the top of this post was my best effort, and I was quite pleased with it.

I then rushed down to ground level and took some more photographs. Again there was the problem of either showing the whole group with a fairly wide view which made them rather small, or of using a longer focal length and showing just a small section of the protesters. As you can see from my other pictures on My London Diary at Worldwide Rise for Climate the latter approach was probably better than the wider view above.

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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Justice for Windrush

Months after the scandal over the Home Office’s treatment of the ‘Windrush Generation’ and their families first came into the national news, there seems to be no end in sight. Fresh revelations about the ‘hostile environment’ created at the Home Office, largely by Theresa May keep coming to light, new stories of deportations or continuing fights to stay in the UK, more on the deliberate destruction of historical records continue to come out, and the Home Office and government response is still sadly lacking in compassion.

Demands are still being made to produce documents that few residents of the UK would have kept and peope are still being threatened with deportation, and we now know of many who have been deported and died abroad, away from the families they have here.

Several of those who are have been personally affected, some still having to fight to remain here spoke at the event which was organised by Movement For Justice, an organisation that has for years worked with detainees in immigration detention, and has taken the lead in organising protests at Harmondsworth and Yarl’s Wood detention centres in recent years.

The protest began slowly with a rally in Windrush Square, its name commemorating the first wave of migrants lured to work in this country who arrived on the Empire Windrush, though many came in the following years, when UK organisations were actively recruiting to fill the gaps in the NHS, London Transport and other vital public services.

It’s the same racist hostile attitude to migrants that has also, along with a more general disregard of the poor that has led to disasters such as Grenfell, and unsurprisingly there are links. Many of those killed in that disaster were migrants, and among those affected were children and grand-children of the WIndrush generation.

Brixton is where many of the Windrush generation settled, largely because they were given temporary accomodation in an large air raid shelter up the road in Clapham and went to Brixton Labour Exchange to find jobs. Friends and families moved into the area to keep up connections – and also to avoid the worst of the racism found in other areas of the city and country.

Their presence gave a new life to a rather tired part of London, creating a vibrant atmosphere in the area, which together with its good transport links and closeness to the West End has made it a prime target for gentrification. The march around Brixton made its way back to Windrush Square down Brixton Road, under the railway bridge on which the graffiti reads “Clapham That Way You 2D Flat White Tepid Colonialist Wanker”

Ennerdale

I spent the first week of September staying with friends at a large holiday cottage in Ennerdale on the western edge of the Lake District.

Ennerdale is an area many tourists to the Lake District never visit, away from the main centres and rather isolated, particularly because there is no road though it. The nearest town of any real size is Whitehaven. You can cycle along some distance, but have to come back the same way and the only way to go through is on foot, and walkers do pass particulary those on Wainwright’s coast to coast walk. There are a couple of car parks near to the lake from which you can walk.

Ennerdale is being deliberately ‘re-wilded’, though given the large forestry plantations around it, it will not revert to its previous state. But it does mean it is not being developed for tourism like some other parts of the Lakes, though walkers are welcome and there are two youth hostels up the valley. It is also under threat by the nuclear industry which is the largest employer in the area, based at Sellafield, with offices in Whitehaven who see it as a suitable place to set up a radioactive waste facility or GDF (geological disposal facility). Cumbria, the county council turned this down in 2013 but it still remains likely.

I took two Fuji cameras with me to Ennerdale, the X-T1 and X-E3, along with several lenses including the Fuji 10-24mm and 18-135mm and a Samyang 8mm fisheye. They performed well, though I did need the five batteries I had with me on several days, and it was sometimes tricky to recharge them all for the next day. Even if you don’t take many pictures, the batteries still run down, and I never managed anything approaching the quoted battery life on either camera.

I’ve written about the various places I photographed on My London Diary and will simply list the different stories here. There are many more pictures with the posts there.

Ennerdale Holiday
Ennerdale arrival
Ennerdale Bridge

Cleator Moor
Loweswater

Whitehaven
Walking round Ennerdale Water
A Lakeland Drive
Crag Fell
Penrith Castle

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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

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South Kenton to Hendon

Here is the text I wrote about this walk for My London Diary. If you go to Capital Ring: South Kenton to Hendon you will see many more pictures from the walk.

On August Bank Holiday I walked another stage of the Capital Ring with Linda.

I’m not a great fan of potted walks like the Capital Ring, though it does go through some interesting places. Though it does ring around the capital, it does so wherever possible through green spaces rather than the high streets and industrial areas which are often of greater interest, at least to me. As often we made a few small detours to add interest (and one where the somewhat curious walk directions led us astray.)

Today our walk began at South Kenton, where we had ended the previous section with a drink in The WIndermere. Today it was too early for that and we carried on through suburban streets and parks towards Fryent Country Park, where we climbed to the top of Barn Hill, with views towards Wembley, and then across to another hill.

The directions in the guide from there were rather lacking and we got just a little lost before finding our way out to Salmon Lane.

The graveyard around the old St Andrew’s Church had some interesting gravestones, but by then I was eager to get on the the Welsh Harp where we planned to eat our lunch. We had to make a detour to the garden centre before then, but soon we were able to sit on a seat overlooking the water.

At Cool Oak Lane we left the road briefly to view the West Hendon Waterside, where council and developers are destroying the West Hendon estate to build expensive flats. As one resident put it in a blog:

“local Tory councillors see the place where they live as not a community, but a business opportunity, and under the pretext of ‘regeneration’, and despite a promise to residents of a better housing on the same site, handed the publicly owned land to Barratt London for a private, luxury high rise property development.

The land was worth £12 million, but was given to developers for £3, so as to allow them to maximise profits on their investment, conservatively estimated last year at a mere £92 million.”

Barnet is not alone in following a policy of social cleansing for the profits of private companies both here and in the Grahame Park estate. It is happening all over London and it isn’t just Tory councils, but Labour ones such as Southwark, Newham, Lambeth and the rest who are using the pretext of regeneration to get rid of their poorer residents and replace them by wealthier ones who can afford high market rents. If the council have a duty to rehouse tenants they may find themselves offered a flat in Newcastle, when their jobs and schools are in the London borough they have lived in for years, perhaps all their lives.

Crossing the A5 Broadway took a little time, and then it was a long walk up Park Road to the subway underthe much busier Hendon Way and on to Hendon Park. By now I was getting tired and it was a pleasure to have an icecream at the Hendon Park Café, the first kosher park café to open up in the UK, before catching the underground on our way home.

More pictures from the walk on My London Diary at Capital Ring: South Kenton to Hendon.
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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Animal Rights

I have no qualms about being called ‘speciesist‘ other than I think it an ugly coinage. While I’m happy with the idea that animals have rights, I still think that there is something special about being human. We are after all the only species that campaigns for animal rights, and whose future is in doubt because of our own actions.

Nor either am I a vegan, though I’ve no quarrel with those who choose to be so. As a species I think we are omniverous, evolved to exist on a diet that includes vegetables as well as meat. But certainly we eat far too much of it, many more than is good either for us or the planet, and I’ve long reduced my own intake. But while nature is still red in tooth and claw I refuse to feel guilty about my occasional intake of grass-fed meat or free range eggs or dairy products. Being vegan is good for the planet, but everyone being vegan would be a calamity.

Some of my ancestors were farmers, and I think I still have distant relatives who are, though we’ve long lost touch. They kept sheep on Welsh hills and of course geese and chickens and I think the odd cow and pig, mainly for their own consumption. We had chickens too, just down the road at my gran’s, scratting about in her yard, and my father and an uncle were both bee-keepers. The animals were looked after well – they were after all a considerable investment – and of course farm animals only exist because when the time comes they will be killed and eaten. And the English countryside without farm animals would be a very different place.

Back when I was young, even in outer London where I grew up we were far closer to the sources of our food. Our fruit and veg came mainly from our gardens and allotments too and we ate what was in season, along with a few things that came in tins. I’d seen pineapples when I was small but for us it was a fruit that came in rings in tins, though we did have apples, pears, plums, strawberries, raspberries, loganberries, gooseberries, red currants, black currants, blackberries in profusion, along with our annual glut of peaches, far more than ever we could eat or give away from two stones my father had planted years earlier in the back garden.

We were, as the planes going a few feet over our heads reminded us every minute or too, close to Heathrow, in a part of Middlesex which had once been full of orchards and market gardens but is now largely covered in concrete runways and housing estates.

As usual I digress. But as I photographed the various banners and placards, I found myself sometimes a little uneasy about the hectoring tone of some and overstatement of some of them. Meat really isn’t murder and milk isn’t rape and to say so rather insults the victims of these abhorrent crimes. Of course there were many I could sympathise with, against cruel farming practices, the fur trade, hunting… but too many that seemed to be based on thinking that animals are just like us. They aren’t. Animal rights are not human rights. And I couldn’t but wish that we could see some of the evident enthusiasm and activism being directed towards protecting human rights which are abused and under threat both here and around the world.

More pictures at: Thousands March for Animal Rights

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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Rothschild’s Gunnersbury

It should have been an easy walk from Brentford Station to Gunnersbury Park and it wasn’t far, but seemed longer going on a narrow path past extensive building work. The park used to be the home of various Rothschilds, part bought by Nathan Mayer Rothschild in 1835, and the rest in 1889. He had come to establish a bank in London and made a huge fortune in the Napoleonic wars smuggling gold bullion to pay Wellington’s troops, and by the time he bought the ‘Large Mansion’ was the richest man in Britain, but didn’t live long to enjoy this country estate, dying the following year. It flourished under his son Lionel, the man he lent the government the cash to buy half the Suez Canal.

After Nathan’s grandson Leopold died in 1917 (the family having acquired a ‘de’) parts of the estate were sold off and in 1925 his widow sold the remaining 75 hectares of park and houses to the boroughs of Ealing and Acton (with some financial support from Middlesex County Council) to be kept for leisure purposes as a memorial to her late husband, and the park opened to the public in 1926.

Gunnersbury had been chosen as it was ‘out of town’ a convenient ‘country estate’ for the lavish parties held there, only a short drive of around 8 miles from West End homes. Part of the reason for the sale may have been the opening in 1925 of the Great West Road, running along the southern edge of the park which would have brought much more traffic and make the location considerably less rural, with new estates being developed all around it.

The Large Mansion has been recently done up and looks in splendid condition, though the local history museum it contains has been given a makeover as a rather shallow visitor attraction. There are some things of interest, and it is still worth a visit, particularly the extensive kitchens, but I prefer my museums dusty and crowded with artifacts, and preferably with ready access to local history resources. Perhaps the large collections the two boroughs had are still available elsewhere; some documents form Hounslow are now at the libraries in Feltham and Chiswick.

In the upper corridor are some fine large prints from the Autochromes taken around the house by Leopold de Rothschild, a keen photographer in the early years of the last century. He took up the process in 1908, the year after it was introduced, and The Rothschild Archive holds 733 autochrome plates, the largest collection by any single British photographer to have survived, and you can download an interesting document about them.

One of the reasons why the autochrome process never achieved great popularity was that there was no simple way to print or reproduce the images. The plates, available in sizes from about 4.5×10.5cm to 18x30cm were usually viewed with a special viewer containing a mirror (or eyepieces with prisms) as the images were inverted. Now of course it is possible to scan them and make prints.

We met the older members of our family at the mansion, after they had taken the short bus journey from Acton Town and ate at the cafe in the park. Tasty enough but not a place for either the hungry or poor, and for me the least satisfactory part of our day out.

I made my excuses and left to take a further walk around the park and more pictures on a more direct way back to Brentford, intending to pick up another small snack when I got there. I’d just missed a train so took a further short walk around Brentford, although it was now raining slightly.

Gunnersbury Park & Brentford
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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Free Wine!

Free Wine, or rather, ‘Free Bobi Wine‘ was the slogan of the protest. I have to confess that I’d not before been aware of Bobi Wine, a Ugandan business man, musician and more recently Ugandan MP. Bobi Wine his stage name, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu grew up in a slum in Uganda’s capital Kampala and is noted for his humanitarian work and promoting practical projects to improve conditions for the poor. He was elected as an MP in a by-election in April 2017.

President Museveni has been in power since 1986, bringing in legislation that although it allowed political parties to exist, banned them from campaigning in elections. In 2005 this ban was ended by a constitutional referendum. When elections were held the following year, Museveni was re-elected and the Ugandan Supreme Court upheld the result despite finding evidence of “ intimidation, violence, voter disenfranchisement, and other irregularities.” He won further elections in 2011 and 2016.

International organisations rate the Ugandan government as among the most corrupt in the world, and the country has a terrible human rights record. Laws still limit many normal political activities and many opposition politicians, including main opposition leader Kizza Besigye have been arrested. So the arrest of Bobi Wine in August was hardly surprising, although it led to riots calling for his release with arrests and shooting by police and army and widespread calls in Uganda and internationally calling for his release.

Winee was tortured after arrest and in jail and was in a poor condition when brought first to a military court and then to a civilian court on the day of this protest. The charges against him were dropped, but before he left the courts he was rearrested and charged with treason. Released on bail the following month he went to the USA for medical treatment. In October the case against him and 34 co-defendants was adjourned and is expected to return to court on December 3rd.

Gatherings on his return to Uganda were forbidden, but he now appears to be getting on fairly normally with his life, and was recently in Ghana for the AFRIMA awards business summit.

It was a crowded and emotional event, with some very enthusiastic shouting and dancing as well as speeches. After a rally outside Ugandan House in Trafalgar Square they mmoved down to protest further in Whitehall opposite Downing St. When I left they were debating whether to return to the embassy.

Free Bobi Wine – Ugandans protest

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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Justice for Marikana

On the day of the 6th anniversary of the Marikana Massacre, August 16th, there was a protest and vigil for the victims outside South Africa House in Trafalgar Square.

People held up posters with large photographs and brief details of those killed. As well as the 34 shot by South African police as they ran away as a demonstration was dispersed, there were other workers killed during the course of the dispute.

The use of force by South African police against the strikers was encouraged by Lonmin, including Cyril Ramaphosa, one of its directors and now President of SOuth Africa, who described the dispute where the strikers were faced by 800 police as a ‘dastardly criminal act’ requiring ‘concomitant action’.

Lonmin has long avoided its responibilities towards the workers at Marikana, failing to provide them with proper housing and other facilities as well as paying low wages. The company is a subsidiary of the notorious Lonrho, originally founded by imperialist and white supremacist Cecil Rhodes, and the vigil organisers describe it as perserving “its colonial legacy as the corporate face of racial capitalism.” Having avoided any compensation for 6 years, Lonmin is apparently getting ready to cut and run, selling the platinum mine to Sibanye-Stillwater.

The vigil and other events earlier in the week were organised by the Marikana Solidarity Collective which includes members of Marikana Miners Solidarity Campaign, the Pan-Afrikan Society Community Forum, London Mining Network and Decolonising Environmentalism. There was drumming and speeches from activists including trade unionists from the UK and overseas before a vigil which began with African singing in which the names of the murdered miners were each read as their photographs were held up.

The photographs, along with flowers, were then laid in front of the gates of South Africa House.

More pictures at Justice for Marikana vigil

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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Marikana, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Brazil

Monday 13th August was a long day for protests in London, and one that reflected the global nature of London both as a financial capital and in its population now.

The first event I covered reflected the huge involvement of the City of London in the exploitation of mineral resources around the world, and with it the callous disregard both for the countries whose resources are being plundered and in particular the workers involved. The very buildings we walked around on our tour of investors, insurers and shareholders profiting from the violence against people and nature in Marikana were a reminder of the great wealth that was appropriated from our Empire and is still being made from countries around the world.

This was a story backed up by facts and figures in presentations at the brief stops the tour made as the tour stopped at Majedie, Schroders, Investec, Legal & General and BASF, the major customers for Marikana’s platinum.

The tour came three days before the 6th anniversary of the Marikana Massacre when 34 striking miners were shot dead by South African police at Lonmin’s platinum mine, for striking for better wages and living and working conditions. Those shot were trying to disperse and hide and many who survived are still in prison, and 19 were charged with murder. There has been no justice and no compensation for the victims’ families or for the injured mineworkers. One of the South African company directors implicated in ordering the police to take action is Cyril Ramaphosa, now President of South Africa.

From the city I went by bus on my way to Belgravia, taking a route that took me down Whitehall. Looking out of an upper-deck window I saw there was a protest taking place opposite Downing St, rang the bell and jumped off at the next stop.

I’d photographed the Bangladeshi Nationalist Party UK at an earlier event also calling for the release of their party leader Begum Khaleda Zia, jailed in February for five years for embezzlement; her supporters claim the charge was politically motivated.

I took a few photographs, but couldn’t stop long as I was on my way elsewhere. Friends from Bangladesh have told me that both the BNP and their opponents now in power, the Awami League are both corrupt and neither represents the interests of the people of their country. There are some things on which I don’t know enough about to take sides.

Fortunately buses in London are usually frequent, and before long I saw the next on my route and made a run to the stop to catch it, getting to Belgrave Square only around ten minutes later than intended.

Belgrave Square was for a return visit to hunger striker Ali Mushaima, campaigning for his father imprisoned in Bahrain and camping on the pavement in front of the embassy. Early in the morning the previous day someone in the embassy had gone onto the ambassador’s balcony and thrown a bucket of an unknown liquid down on him while he was asleep.

The police had been called but do not appear to have taken the attack very seriously. While diplomats have immunity the attack is thought most likely to have been carried out by one of the bodyguards who are subject to the laws of this country, but the police appear to have declined to make appropriate investigations.

The campaigners from Inminds.com had returned to show their support in an emergency protest, along with a few friends of the hunger striker. Though the police had failed to properly investigate the attack, a small group came to harass the protesters, telling them they could not protest on the pavement outside the embassy, but had to move to the opposite side of the wide street.

There were arguments and threats of arrest, but the protesters who had previously protested in the same place with police on duty not objecting, refused to move and went ahead, performing a short piece of street theatre in which Theresa May sold arms to the Bahraini dictator which he used to shoot protesters, who were then chained up. Unlike in real life the International Criminal Court came to their rescue, released them and condemned the Bahraini regime for their crimes against humanity.

It was unrehearsed and something of a shambles, but pictures taken by Inminds were later made into an effective comic strip about the situation in Bahrain.

I rushed off and jumped on another bus to take me back to a protest outside the Brazilian embassy. I arrived shortly after it was due to start, but there were very few present and nothing much happening. Eventually more people arrived and the protest began, and I was able to take a few pictures before it was time to leave for home and some food.

The protest by the Workers’s Party (TP) was calling for the release of former President Lula so he could stand in the October elections. The TP say that the right wing who have seized power in Brazil have brought highly dubious charges against both Lula and Dilma Rousseff to prevent them winning in the elections.

By the time the event got going, the sun was low in the sky and shining almost horizontally into my lens making it impossible to work from some positions, and there were some excessive flare made unusable. It also created some very high contrast where there were areas of sun and shade in the same images. Fortunately working with RAW images does make it possible to do a fair amount of taming the contrast, so long as detail is retained in the highlights, but it does add to processing time. Some can be handled by overall changes but faces that are half in shade and half in sun sometimes need both ‘dodging’ in the dark areas and ‘burning’ in the light parts.

More on all four events on My London Diary:

Justice For Marikana – 6th Anniversary
Release Bangladeshi opposition leader
Attack on Bahrain Embassy hunger striker
Free Lula – Brazilians for Democracy & Justice

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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Free Shahidul, Free Hassan

Shahidul Alam who grew up in London returned to his native Bangladesh and has become its leading photographer as well as setting up a number of related major organisatins there, including Drik and Majority World photographic agencies and Pathshala which is now arguably the world’s leading photojournalism school. His work has made Bangaldesh an important centre in Asia and the world for photography.

His gallery at the Drik Agency has several times attracted the attention of police. A show on Tibet was closed down after China had put pressure on the Bangladesh government, and the show ‘Crossfire‘ dealing with extra-judicial killings in Bangladesh was also raided and closed down by a police raid.

On 5th August, shortly after Alam had been interviewed on Al Jazeera over Skype about the student protests on road safety that had been taking place in Dhaka, police raided his home and arrested him. A week later he appeared in court after having been badly beaten and despite various court appearances he remained in jail – until a few days ago when he was finally released on bail, possibly as a result of a special section about him in a resolution on the human rights situation in Bangladesh adopted by the European Parliament and the publication of an open letter about him by Indian writer Arundhati Roy both coming 48 hours before his release.

After his arrest, there were petitions and letters from photographers, academics and others around the world, including several I signed, as well as protests. The protest at the Bangladesh embassy in London was attended by a number of his friends and relatives and several well-known photographers.

I’ve written a number of times about Shahidul, both here and elsewhere; one of the longer pieces still available on line is From the Lions Point Of View.

Earlier in the day I had been at another protest calling for freedom, this time outside the Bahrain embassy, where Ali Mushaima was on the 10th day of a hunger strike demanding that his 70-year-old father immediately receives the medical care he needs, as well as access to books and family visits.

Hassan Mushaima was one of the leaders of the 2011 mass movement that peacefully called for human rights and democratic reforms in Bahrain, which was brutally crushed by the ruling Khalifa dictatorship aided by Saudi forces, killing dozens and imprisoning thousands. Around 5000 are said to still be held in Bahraini jails and Islamic Human Rights organisation Inminds.com who organised the solidarity protest calls for all of them to be released.

Ali Mushaima’s hunger strike has not led to his father’s release, but it did result in him being given a cancer scan and access to vital medicine and following many requests from his friends in September after 44 days he moved to a liquid diet that would keep him alive, though still resolved to keep fighting for other medical treatment and better conditions for his father, and if necessary to renew his hunger strike.

More from both protests:
Free Shahidul Alam
Free Bahraini Human Rights activist

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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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