Africa | >Re-PHOTO

Safe Passage, Guardians of the Forest – 2017

Safe Passage, Guardians of the Forest: On Tuesday 24th October 2017 Safe Passage held a rally outside Parliament on the first anniversary of the destruction of the Calais ‘Jungle’ calling for help for the hundreds of refugees still sleeping rough in Calais. Later I photographed a rally by Guardians of the Forest, indigenous leaders from Latin America, Indonesia and Africa on their way to the COP23 UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn calling for the rights of indigenous peoples living in forests to be acknowledged and for an end to the destruction of these vital natural resources by mining and cash-crop cultivation.

Safe Passage for the Children of Calais

Old Palace Yard, Westminster

Safe Passage, Guardians of the Forest - 2017

Safe Passage held a rally before going in to lobby MPs on the first anniversary of the destruction of the Calais ‘Jungle’.

Although they praised the government for bringing some child refugees here from France they called for them to provide safe routes here for those still in Calais who have family here and to fill the remaining places allocated under the Dubs amendment.

Eighteen months after the Dubs amendment was passed by Parliament there were still refugee children in Calais who were entitled to come here to be reunited with their families and Safe Passage urged the Home Office to station an official there to help to transfer them and work with the French to provide safe accommodation for all refugee children.

The Dubs amendment had originally proposed that the UK offer a home to 3,000 unaccompanied children but as passed it allowed the government to set a number in consultation with local authorities. Shamefully when the scheme closed in 2020 the government stated it had met its commitment with the transfer of only 480 children.

They were given a special status to stay for for five years with the right to study, work, and to access public funds and healthcare, and to apply after this to settle permanently without paying a fee.

More pictures on My London Diary at Safe Passage for the Children of Calais

Guardians of the Forest – COP 23

Parliament Square

Indigenous leaders from Latin America, Indonesia and Africa held a rally in Parliament Square commemorating those who have lost their lives defending the forests against mining, the cutting down of forests for palm oil and other crops and other threats to the forests and those who live in them.

The Guardians of the Forest held up photographs of a few of the many who have been murdered for the profits of unscrupulous companies including many listed on the London stock exchange. Whole tribes have been forced from their homes and forests where they have lived for many generations, their ancestral rights to their lands ignored and dismissed by governments and occupiers.

They demanded their rights be recognised and for the destruction of the forests they have maintained in a renewable fashion for hundreds or thousands of years to be stopped. These forests have a vital role in removing carbon dioxide from the air and producing oxygen and play a vital role in opposing climate change and preserving biodiversity. As well as reducing emissions we also need to increase rather than reduce forests and other natural habitats that remove carbon dioxide.

*People spoke in their native languages and were interpreted into English*

The Guardians were on their way to the COP23 UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn to argue that the continuing maintenance of the forests by their indigenous inhabitants is vital in the fight against climate change, and that the clearance and devastation has to be stopped. But they face a difficult task against the huge numbers of well-funded lobbyists and powerful governments who dominate these events and have so far prevented the world taking the actions needed for long-term survival.

More on My London Diary – Guardians of the Forest – COP23.

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Trade Justice Mass Action 2007

Trade Justice Mass Action. Thursday 19th April 2007 saw a mass action by the Trade Justice Movement in London which was a part of a wider global day of action by campaigners across Europe as well as in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific – the ‘APC’ countries.

The protest was particularly about the agreements between the APC countries and the EU, and the unfair trade deals (economic partnership agreements or EPAs) that the EU was negotiating. The African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States organisation was founded in 1975 and the 71 countries then involved came to an trade agreement with the European Economic Community (EEC) in Lomé, Togo, the Lomé Convention.

This “provided for most ACP agricultural and mineral exports to enter the EEC free of duty. Preferential access based on a quota system was agreed for products, such as sugar and beef, in competition with EEC agriculture” from the 71 countries in the ACP and it also provided funds for aid and investment.

The Lomé Convention was twice updated but in 1995 the United States complained to the World Trade Organisation that it was unfair to them and the WTO Dispute Settlement Body ruled in their favour. Many argue that the WTO prioritizes the interests of wealthy nations and multinational companies and undermines national sovereignty, and hinders efforts to address global issues like poverty and climate change.

Negotiations between the European Union and the 78 ACP countries held in Coutonou, Benin in 2000 led to a new agreement, the Cotonou Agreement, signed by all except Cuba, which came into force in 2003 – and was later revised in 2005 and 2010.

According to Wikipedia, “The Cotonou Agreement is aimed at the reduction and eventual eradication of poverty while contributing to sustainable development and to the gradual integration of ACP countries into the world economy. The revised Cotonou Agreement is also concerned with the fight against impunity and promotion of criminal justice through the International Criminal Court.”

The ACP, now renamed the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, came to a new agreement, the Samoa Agreement, to replace this which entered into force provisionally in January 2024 but has proved more controversial, particularly because of its support for gender equality.

The Mass Action in 2007 was organised by the Trade Justice Movement, which included 78 UK-based organisations including aid organisations such as Action Aid, Cafod, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Tearfund, War On Want and the World Development Movement, trade unions, churches, fair trade groups and more.

It began with a rally in Belgrave Square, a square containing many empbassies. The rally was outside the German (and Austrian) embassies, with speakers from a number of the groups including Frances O’Grady from the Trade Union Congress, Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth and speakers from some APC countries.

*Setting off for the Department of Trade and Industry*

At the end of the rally groups left to deliver a letter and a large key to every EU country’s embassy with a letter and a key, demanding that the EU stops negotiating unfair trade deals (economic partnership agreements or EPAs) with developing countries. One group went to the Department of Trade and Industry to deliver to the UK. I could not go with all the groups going to all 27 locations to deliver these, but did manage to take photographs of the groups outside the Finnish, Spanish and Austrian embassies.

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Afrikan Emancipation Day Call for Reparations

Seven years ago on August 1st 2014, the centenary of the foundation by Marcus Garvey of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, I photographed Rastafarians meeting in Windrush Square for speeches and ceremonies before a march to Parliament demanding reparations for the descendants of those taken from Africa by the Atlantic Slave Trade.

August 1 was chosen as the founding date for the UNIA and for the Madison Square meeting and this protest as it was the 1 August 1834 was Emancipation day, following the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, when slavery was ended in the British Empire.

Since then, similar events have taken place each year in Brixton each Afrikan Emancipation Day – August 1st – with the event growing in support each year. Last year the organisers changed the format of the event, as the supporters of the event felt it was having little impact and their demand to the UK Government to establish an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ) and to commit to holistic reparations taking into consideration various proposals for reparations in accordance with the United Nations Framework on a Right to a Remedy and Reparation was being ignored.

The decided to hold a series of events in Brixton, blocking local roads to do so, an Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations Rebellion Groundings event. This gained far more attention in the media and the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign and the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee have decided to hold a similar rebellion on Sunday 1st August 2021.

With some help from Extinction Rebellion who have supported previous events they intend to lock-down Brixton Road for the day, and to establish a series of ‘Grounding spaces’ for public action and learning on various aspects of the struggle under the general theme of ‘Uniting to Stop the Maangamizi for Our Very Survival: Planet Repairs Now’.

Maangammizi is a Swahili word annihilation, used to describe the genocide and ecocide which has taken place over centuries and is still causing huge damage across the planet. Climate change disproportionately effects Africa and the Global South.

The UK Government continues to turn a deaf ear to the demand for reparations, writing in response to a petition in 2018 “we do not believe reparations are the answer” and that they “should focus on challenges that face our countries in the 21st century” rather than historic events such as the Transatlantic slave trade. Unfortunately it hasn’t been doing well on those challenges as a recent deliberately misleading report on racial disparity and our current rise in average temperatures demonstrate.

More at:
Rastafari demand reparations for slave trade
Afrikans demand reparations

Afrikans demand reparations

Time for a little more colour on >Re:PHOTO, and looking back to warmer and sunnier weather at the start of August last year.

The Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March has been an annual event in London http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2014/08/aug.htm#rastafari since 2014, which was the centenary of the foundation by Marcus Garvey of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Jamaica. Garvey had spent the previous two years working as a journalist and studying in London and founded the UNIA as as a means of uniting all of Africa and its diaspora into “one grand racial hierarchy.” The organisers of that first march intended it as a one-off event, but others took over insisting it should be annual. This was the first time I’d managed to cover it since 2014.

Garvey chose the date as 1 August 1834 was Emancipation day, following the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, when slavery was ended in the British Empire. Claims for reparations for descendants of those enslaved by the Atlantic Slave Trade came to the fore in 1999 when the African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission called for a payment of $777 trillion to Africa within 5 years, and in 2004 a case was brought and lost against Lloyds of London and Jamaican Rastafarians made a claim for £72,5bn for Europe to resettle of 500,000 Jamaicans back in Africa which was rejected. Other claims have been lodged on behalf of Guyana, Antigua, Barbuda and Barbados.

I felt a little apprehensive at photographing this event, and just a few people have shown a little hostility towards me, though many more have been welcoming. Anyone who has grown up white in the UK has obviously benefited from the historic proceeds of slavery (as so do those of any other origin living here) but I’m fairly sure that my ancestors were not among those carrying out and profiting from the trade. They will have been being exploited by that same class that was enslaving Africans; some thrown off their lands by the Highland Clearances to make way for sheep. Others will I think have been at the heart of the emancipation movement. They will have received nothing of the huge financial compensation that was paid to the enslaving class, which created a debt which members of the British public were paying off through taxation until 2015.

This year the march was divided into 9 blocs, although in practice there was a great deal of overlap. One of these was the Ubuntu – Non-Afrikan Allies Bloc which included Extinction Rebellion XR Connecting Communities.

While I think there is a firm moral case for reparations, I think the demands are unlikely to impress European or American governments, certainly not on the scale being claimed. And I wonder if the demand actually deflects from a more important need for decolonisation of Africa and the Caribbean as well as other areas of the majority world, reclaiming national assets from the various multi-nationals that are now continuing the exploitation of the continent.

I left the march as it made its way through Brixton towards Parliament where there was to be another protest rally in Parliament Square.

Afrikans demand reparations

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