>Re-PHOTO

Feeling against the police was running high and was expressed in placards and banners including one referring to the well-known song

Perhaps the police actually read my stories on Demotix  (usually very similar to those I post later with more pictures on My London Diary.) Actually I know some of them sometimes do, because I’ve had officers making comments to me about things I’ve written in the past. And I’ve recently sent in a Freedom of Information request and am waiting to hear what – if anything – they have about me on their files, or rather those files they are prepared to admit exist (they’ve been caught out a few times lying over such matters.)

The previous week, after Friday’s protest I’d written

I found it hard to see any reason for the large police presence and stopping them walking into Montague Place as they wanted. It did seem an incredible and pointless waste of public money, and it resulted in more inconvenience to the public than if the event had not been policed at all.

But I think in this particular case I wasn’t the only journalist make the obvious clear, and perhaps even some of the police themselves may have realised that the heavy-handed policing of protests against a police presence on campus is counter-productive.

Other banners were less contentious – such as ‘Make Love not Student Debt’

So, unlike the previous week, where they came in force to London University, for the Cops Off Campus National Student Protest in exactly the same place they sensibly kept out of sight, and the protest passed off more or less peacefully, with far less mayhem than if they had turned up.

The Book Block with shields bearing the names of well-known titles for protection

There was a little damage to the gates of Senate House, and later, in an event I thought was probably staged for the press, to the doors into the entrance area of the building, when a few students attacked them using rubbish bins as battering rams. But there was no real violence and no attempt to occupy parts of the university, which would have broken the High Court injunction.

A clown mimes taking my photograph – and is caught by my flash

The protest was about a serious matter, and one which raises questions about the nature and purpose of universities that deserve proper debate, it was also an enjoyable and at times exhilarating event, with various groups enjoying themselves in their different ways, and ended with those taking part feeling a sense of achievement. It seems clear that the attempt by the London University management to stifle protest and freedom of speech and assembly has failed.

Two major issues remain to be settled; the future of the University of London Union and the proper treatment of low paid workers at the university who deserve decent conditions of work and pay. Until the management behave reasonably over these issues, protests will continue.

The book shields were useful in pushing against the gates

Photographically there were few problems, and it was largely a matter of being in the right place at the right time. When the students decided to go through the gates of the Senate House I had to move out of their way, and it was too crowded to get a really good view, though the fisheye did help a little.

There were some interesting faces in the crowd, and as well as taking pictures of the speakers I also took some of those listening to speeches.

After I left to go home there were further protests around central London by some of the students, where the police did show up (if sometimes rather late) including at the Royal Courts of Justice where the inquest into the shooting by police of Mark Duggan which sparked riots in Tottenham and elsewhere was taking place. It’s always difficult to know when to leave.

Cops Off Campus National Student Protest
Continue reading Peace as Police Stay Away

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.
Continue reading Human Rights & Syria

Tibetans walk backwards in front or Parliament in human rights protest

I spend quite a lot of my time covering protests walking backwards, and have the bruises and scars to prove it from various encounters with curbs, vehicles, lamp posts and other street furniture. Fortunately none of these occasions has been seriously damaging, other than to my dignity, long since a lost cause.

Human rights for Tibetans in Tibet also seems increasingly to be a lost cause, as Western nations eager for business with China put their own national interests in profit above higher concerns. Of course its always been so, and we even once went to war with China to force it to allow our drug traders to operate.

So while the west has made noises about human rights violations by China since the invasion of Tibet in 1959, these noises have been getting softer and softer over recent years and are now a mere formality, while China has ramped up its efforts to completely eradicate Tibetan culture, committing atrocities against the Tibetan people – with over 1.2 million deaths. In recent years around 130 desperate Tibetans have set fire to themselves in protest, and the Chinese response has been to arrest and torture family members, charging them with abetting self-immolation.

They started to protest in Parliament Square but were soon told to leave by the GLC’s ‘heritage wardens’

Human rights are indeed going backwards in Tibet, and Tibetans decided to march backwards in London past the Houses of Parliament to Downing St to highlight what is happening there and as a direct response to China becoming a member of the UN Human Rights Council, despite its own terrible human rights record and its record of support for human rights violations by other countries.

Blue, white, red, yellow and a little green in the flags – and one man wears a Union flag as well

Protests by Tibetans are always colourful, with so many of them wearing or carrying the brightly coloured Tibetan flag – something that would rapidly lead to arrest and torture in Tibet. At times the colours tend to dominate the pictures and I sometimes find it overpowering. Visually you can have too much of a good thing.

They are walking backwards but it isn’t very obvious.

It was also a slight problem to convey the fact that people were walking backwards in a still image. People walking backwards do look rather similar to people walking forwards, and it’s something that makes far more impact in a moving image than a still. There is something about the postures in the images from a distance, but working close, I don’t think it is possible to tell.

Walking backwards in Whitehall – but impossible to tell.

However it was a welcome change to be able to walk forward while taking the photographs!
More about the protest at Tibetans Walk Backwards for Human Rights.
Continue reading Walking Backwards for Tibet