Amnesty International

Close Guantanamo 5th Anniversary Demonstration – 2007

Close Guantanamo 5th Anniversary Demonstration: A protest on Thursday 11th January 2007 outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square marked the 5th anniversary of the setting up of the illegal US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay where almost entirely innocent prisoners were held and tortured without trial for many years. Over the years around 780 men were brought to the prison and by 2025 almost all had been released without charge. Around nine have died there, most alleged to have committed suicide, but 15 are thought to still be held there at the end of 2025, largely because there is no country to which they can safely be released.

Every year from 2006 to 2019 I photographed protests against the camp, particularly on 11th January, but also on other occasions through the year, particularly covering the long-term campaigns for the release of those British prisoners held there. Protests here became less regular after the release of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident to be held there on 30 October 2015.

*The flag was flying but American Embassy staff kept hidden away from windows throughout the event*

The protest I photographed on 11th January 2007 was the first I knew about on the actual anniversary of the establishment of the camp, and the pictures here and the text below are from that. Then we naively thought that the USA could sink no further, but current events are proving how wrong we were. As usual I’ve made some minor corrections to the text including restoring normal capitalisation and I’ll give a link to the original post were you can find more pictures

Close guantanamo 5th anniversary demonstration

Amnesty International: US Embassy, London. Thur 11 Jan, 2007

*American guard’, ‘Prisoners’, Police and Embassy.*

*Amani Daghayes, sister of Guantamo captive Oscar Deghayes, a British resident*

Orange seems to be a colour fatally linked to America’s disgrace in the modern world through human rights and related abuses. Agent Orange spread dioxin-related birth defects over the vast tracts of south-east Asia it was used to defoliate, and orange boiler-suits have become the symbol of the fatal American own goal in the fight for freedom, the illegal prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Amnesty International marked the fifth anniversary of this blot on the free world with a world-wide series of protests, in New York, Tokyo, Rome, Madrid, Tunis, Tel Aviv and London. I entered Grosvenor Square to see a long line of around three hundred people in orange boiler-suits spreading a quarter of the way around the large square. They were soon formed into groups and marched by those dressed as camp guards into a small pen in the road directly in front of the US Embassy.

In a re-creation of the Guantanamo Bay camp more or less on the embassy doorstep, the ‘guards’ patrolled, issuing arbitrary orders and generally abusing the prisoners, subjecting them to the infamous kneeling ‘submission posture’ with the occasional incident of casual ‘violence’ thrown in for greater authenticity. The hour-long vigil there ended with a display of defiance as the ‘prisoners’ joined together in clapping.

Other amnesty supporters held placards and banners calling for an end to the travesty of justice at Guantanamo Bay and other illegal detention centres and the illegal rendition of prisoners. They called for the release of all those held illegally, and in particular the British residents still in Guantanamo. These included Omar Deghayes, whose sister Amani Deghayes was present at the demonstrations. The lack of any effort by the UK government to press for the release of these British residents is a continuing and senseless disgrace.

*Detainees’ clap at end of demonstration.*

This was a high-profile media event, although I didn’t hear it mentioned on the BBC radio news later in the day, press and TV from London and abroad were covering it. Unlike some earlier events I’ve covered at the same location, the policing was a model of good practice, allowing the press to get on with the job, and proportionate to what was happening.

More pictures on My London Diary.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Vedanta AGM Protest – 2010

Vedanta AGM Protest: Westminster, Wednesday 28 July 2010

The protest outside Vedanta’s AGM held in Westminster on Wednesday 28th July 2010 was the first time I really became aware of the company and its mining activities. This protest concentrated on its plans to displace and wipe out an ancient civilisation in the Niyamgiri Hills of Orissa, India by bauxite mining.

The hills which would have been destroyed by their mining are sacred to the region’s Adivasis, primarily the Dongria Kondh tribes. By 2010 Foil Vedanta who organised the protest were saying that Vedanta had caused more than 100 deaths in the area though accidents, police shooting, forced displacement, injury and illness.

More than a thousand people have already been displaced, with 8000 under threat, moved away from their traditional sources of income and dumped into shanty towns where there is no work. Thousands of acres of fertile agricultural land have been destroyed, rivers and streams disrupted and drinking water contaminated by fly ash and toxic red mud.

Anil Agarwal is CEO of Vedanta

Vedanta Resouces is an Indian company founded and still run by the Agarwal family, but in 2003 was listed on the London Stock Exchange following a two year ban by the Securities Exchange Board of India from accessing capital markets after they were found guilty of cornering shares and rigging share prices.

Police push back security who assaulted activists who tried to enter the building

A damning report, Vedanta’s Billions: Regulatory failure, environment and human rights‘, issued by Foil Vedanta in 2018 accuses “the City of London and the Financial Conduct Authority” of minimising the risks associated with Vedanta’s legal violations and human rights and environmental abuses’ and failing to investigate or penalise any London listed mining company on these grounds.”

Among other crimes, the report names Vedanta as “the latest in a string of London listed mining companies linked to the murder or ‘massacre’ of protesters, including Lonmin, Glencore, Kazakhmys, ENRC, Essar, GCM Resources, Anglo Gold Ashanti, African Barrick Gold and Monterrico Metals.”

As well as Foil Vedanta the campaign against them was supported by Amnesty International, Survival International and Action Aid, and a number of campaigners had become shareholders so they could attend the meeting and attempt to question the company’s activities – and these included Bianca Jagger. Her presence and that of two bright blue aliens from the tribe destroyed in the James Cameron film ‘Avatar’ ensured that the protest for once got some press coverage. Also supporting the protest were the South Asia Solidarity Group, South Asian Alliance, Brent Refugee and Migrant Forum and London Development Education Centre.

The campaign against Vedanta had already been successful in getting various shareholders to end their investment, including the Church of England, the Joseph Rowntree Trust and the Dutch pensions company in ending their investments due to concerns about its approach to human rights and the environment. And continued protests by Foil Vedanta undoubtedly played a part in the company’s decision to de-list from the London Stock Exchange in 2018.

The company was helped to list in London by the British Government’s Department of Trade and Industry and the Department for International Development (DfID), and was getting continued support from the DfID Building Partnerships for Development programme and the Orissa ‘Drivers for Change’ research project, and former British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and High Commissioner of India David Gore-Booth had been a directory.

Its billionaire CEO Anil Agarwal was said to have close links with the extremist umbrella group for Indian Hindu right-wing organistions, Sangh Parivar, said to be responsible for many attacks on Muslim and Christian communities in Orissa, Gujurat and other parts of India.

The Foil Vedanta report has a “special focus on illegal mining in Goa, pollution and tax evasion in Zambia, as well as illegal expansion and pollution in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, industrial disaster at Korba in Chhattisgarh, land settlement and pollution issues in Punjab, displacement and harassment of activists in Lanjigarh, Odisha, and a mineral allocation scam in Rajasthan.“

You can see and read more about the 2010 protest on My London Diary at Vedanta AGM Protest.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Streatham, Spain and Guantanamo – 2006

Streatham, Spain and Guantanamo: Three events in London on Saturday 15th July 2006, a festival, a commemoration and a protest.

Streatham Festival Children’s Parade – Streatham

Streatham Festival held it’s first ever Children’s Parade, children working with artists from Arts Community Exchange and Kids’ City to create sculptures, banners and puppets for all to see.

The parade was led by drummers Ancestral Hands and a cycling stilt-walker brought up the rear as it went along Streatham High Road to St Leonard’s Church.

One of my pictures from this parade was used in the remarkable The Streatham Sketchbook by Jiro Osuga and Mireille Galinou with photography by Torla Evans which was published in 2017 by Your London Publishing. Still available, this was described by Graham Gower of The Streatham Society as “superb and one the best books to be published on Streatham as a place – if not the best.”

more pictures

International Brigade Commemoration – Jubilee Gardens, Waterloo

I’ve attended and photographed a number of the annual commemorations of those who went to fight the fascists in Spain in 1936-9, but this 2006 event was the most memorable. Here’s what I wrote about it in 2006.

Several hundred people attended the annual commemoration at the International Brigade Memorial in Jubilee Gardens London Organised by the International Brigade Memorial Trust on Saturday 15 July.

Between 1936 and 1939 over 35,000 men and women, from more than 50 countries, volunteered for the Republican forces. Of the 2,300 who came from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, over 500 were killed.

Volunteers came largely from working class areas across the country. most were members of communist organisations or otherwise active in the trade unions and other socialist bodies, and their average age was 29.

Seventy years later there are relatively few still alive and active enough to attend the commemoration, but it was good to see seven there. They were Jack Jones who chaired the event, Sam Lesser who spoke and read, as well as Bob Doyle, Paddy Cochrane, Lou Kenton, Jack Edwards and a surprisingly spry Penny Feiwel. As usual there was a reading of the names of those known to have died since the previous year’s meeting.

Rodney Bickerstaff’s address raised the problem of keeping alive the memory of those who responded to the call to help the Spanish republic, but attendances at this annual event seem to have increased over recent years.

There was certainly more media interest than on previous occasions, in part because of the attendance of the Spanish Ambassador and his wife, reflecting the increasing interest from Spain; he also gave a brief speech. As was pointed out, it would have been nice to have a representative of the UK government also present.

As usual, the event concluded with the singing of the ‘Internationale’.
More pictures on My London Diary

Shut Guantanamo now!

The National Guantanamo Coalition had called for a national demonstration in London to protest the deaths of three Guantanamo detainees earlier in the month.

A group of protesters, mainly from the ‘Save Omar Deghayes’ campaign, but also representing other organisations, walked across London from Marble Arch to the new Home Office building in Marsham Street to hand in the petition calling for an independent enquiry into the three recent deaths at Guantanamo. The petition also calls for the immediate sending of all detainees to countries where their basic human rights would not be abused, an immediate closure of Guantanamo and other prisons where those held were denied proper legal process and for proper access to detainees by family and medical personnel.

It was a long, hot and dusty trek across London, particularly tricky for those with pushchairs as we navigated the Hyde Park subways, and we were all glad to arrive (thanks to helpful directions from the police) at the Home Office. The front of the building was like an oasis, shade, green grass, water and trees.

The police did make us get off the grass and also made some effort to stop the display of placards and banners, but most of these remained visible. They had also attracted some attention from the crowds around Buckingham Palace as we passed by.
more pictures

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Pagan Pride & Justice for Darfur 2008

Pagan Pride & Justice for Darfur: On Sunday morning 25th May 2008 I made my way to Red Lion Square in Holborn to photograph the Pagain Pride public procession. Later I went to Downing Street were protesters were meeting to march to a rally at the Sudanese Embassy calling for Sudanese war criminals to be brought to justice.

Pagan Pride – Beltane Bash – Red Lion Square/Russell Square

Pagans – or rather neo-Pagans had come to Conway Hall in the corner of Red Lion Square for a day of celebration of the ancient Spring festival of Beltane, celebrating coming out of winter and the springing of the world into growth.

As well as their private celebrations inside the hall they were also taking part in a public procession, Pagan Pride, which goes the short distance to the fountain in Russell Square for a joyful celebration before returning to Conway Hall.

Nature and the cyclical nature of the seasons plays a central part in pagan beliefs and Godesses and Gods linked with nature play an important role in their ceremonies.

As I commented in 2008 nature appeared “not to be too kind to them as the rain bucketed down as the participants were supposed to gather, with only a few braver members (and some with umbrellas) coming out of the hall, but fortunately for them and the photographers it soon eased off, finally almost stopping as the parade got under way.”

That circular fountain in the garden of Russell Square “could have been designed with them in mind, with a strongly phallic character in the water jets, which in normal use rise and fall, but were left to flow at full strength for most of the ceremony.” In 2008 it was open for everyone to play in but on more recent visits I have noticed it is now surrounded by a fence.

“At first the group danced around the fountain in rings with hands joined, but then many of them started to run through the centre, many getting soaked.”

“Even the drummers, who at first stood on the edge providing a rhythm for the dance, eventually ran though the jets, and finally the Green Man also did so.“

By the time the parade left the square for its return to Conway Hall I’d had enough, and my feet and legs were soaked.

I left with a friend to go and have a cup of tea before going to Whitehall for a very different event.

More pictures at Pagan Pride – Beltane Bash.

Justice for Darfur – London Protest; Whitehall – Sudanese Embassy

Around 200 people, mainly from the Sudan, had gathered opposite Downing Street for a noisy protest before marching to a rally at the Sudanese Embassy opposite St James’s Palace in London.

The Justice for Darfur campaign was supported by around 30 organisations including the Aegis Trust, an international organization working to prevent genocide, Amnesty International and Darfur Union UK, who organised this event together with Aegis Students.

The campaign began when the Sudanese government refused to had over two men to the International Criminal Court. Sudan’s former Minister of the Interior Ahmad Haroun and Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb were wanted on 51 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising from persecution, rapes and murder of civilians in four West Darfur villages.

Haroun had even been promoted to be responsible for humanitarian affairs, and Kushayb, who had been in jail facing other charges when the ICC warrants were issued has been released.

In 2005 the UN Commission of Inquiry into war crimes listed 52 people for investigation and placards named some of these calling for them to be brought to justice. They included Sudan’s President Omar Al Bashir, Saleh Gosh, head of Sudan’s National Security and Intelligence Service, Minister of the Federation Government Nafi Ali Nafi and former Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman.

Earlier that month there had been fresh reports of beatings, detentions and shooting of Darfuri civilians in Khartoum and Omdurman but little had appeared in the UK mainstream press and they had sent no photographers or reporters to the event. It was one of those protests that later one photographer told me his editor dismisses as “tribal matters“.

More pictures at Justice for Darfur.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Guantanamo Day – 11th January

Guantanamo Day – 11th January. It was on January 11, 2002 that George W Bush set up the detention camp on the disputed US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, after he had been advised by lawyers that the US courts would be unable to offer detainees held there the normal legal protection that detention in the US would have enabled.

Camp X-Ray, a temporary facility, began with 22 detainees on that day, and others were soon filling this and the other camps which make up Guantanamo the largest of which was Camp Delta. At first the details of those sent there were kept secret, but eventually the US Department of Defense was forced to respond to a Freedom of Information from the Associated Press and to say that 779 prisoners were being held there.

The world got to know considerably more about what had been going on inside the torture camp in 2011 with the publication of documents by Wikileaks including 779 secret files on the prisoners. Among other revelations was “that more than 150 innocent Afghans and Pakistanis, including farmers, chefs, and drivers, were held for years without charges.”

The US government asserted that those held there were not entitled to any of the protections of the Geneva Conventions, though later they lost the case in the US courts which found that they were entitled to protection under Common Article 3 which applies to armed conflicts “not of an international character”.

From the start the US had claimed to be treating “all detainees consistently with the principles of the Geneva Convention.” This was of course a complete lie. Guantanamo was set up as a torture camp and detainees were routinely abused and tortured, humiliated and kept under inhumane conditions in what an Amnesty International report ‘called the “Gulag of our times.“‘ As various reports by them and others including the Red Cross state it was a human rights scandal. There is much more about this in the Wikipedia article.

When President Obama came to power he had promised to close the camp, but his efforts to do so in 2009 were opposed by the military at Guantanamo and funds to transfer or release the prisoners were blocked by the US Senate. Further opposition from the US Congress against moving prisoners to the US for detention or trial prevented Obama from clearing the camp, but by the end of his administration only 41 men remained detained there.

By the end of 2023, 30 men were still being held at Guantanamo, with over half having been cleared for release. 11 of them have been charged with war crimes and are awaiting a military trial and 1 has been convicted. Some are still there because if sent to their home country they are likely to be subject to further imprisonment or death despite their innocence.

British interest in Gunatanamo decreased sharply after the release in October 2015 of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident there. A Saudi national who had permission to stay in the UK he was able at last to return to his wife and children in Battersea after having been held and tortured since 2002. He had never been charged or faced trial.

The Guardian reported following the publication of the book ‘The Secret History of the Five Eyes‘ by Richard Kerbaj in 2022, that in 2004 “Tony Blair’s government was given special access to US intelligence files on Guantánamo Bay which revealed there was no credible evidence against the British detainees“. Yet Aamer was held for another 11 years.

Since Aamer’s release protests on the anniversary of the setting up of Guantanamo have continued, but on a rather smaller scale as you can see from Vigil marks 17 years of Guantanamo torture in 2019. The pictures on this post are from 2008 when I photographed four different events in London on January 11th.

Six years of Guantanamo: Amnesty
London Guantanamo Campaign / Cageprisoners
Guantanamo – London Catholic Worker
Guantanamo – Parliament Square Rally

Vedanta Foiled

Vedanta Foiled: Vedanta Resources Limited is a mining company with headquarters in London though founded in India in 1976 and is largely owned by the family of its founder Anil Agarwal. Mining is essentially a dirty business, but Vedanta has earned a reputation for being one of the very worst in terms of environmental damage, unsafe operations, human rights and dodgy tax practices.

I first became aware of the company in 2010 when human rights and activist groups, including Survival International, Amnesty International organised a protest in London outside its AGM against its plans to destroy a mountain sacred to the Dongria Kondh people in the Niyamgiri hills in Odisha, India for its deposits of the aluminium ore bauxite. Even the UK government criticised the company, which refused to cooperate with an OECD investigation.

Their refinery in Odissa has also been found to produce high levels of air and water pollution, as have other factories owned by Vedanta subsidiaries elsewhere, including in Zambia.

In 2018 Vedanta announced it was de-listing from the London Stock Exchange after pressure from politicians and activists following the Thoothukudi massacre in Tamil Nadu in May in which 13 protesters were killed and dozens injured, and the success of grassroots activism which has shut down Vedanta’s operations in Goa, Tuticorin and Niyamgiri.

Much of that pressure came from the activities of Foil Vedanta whose annual protests outside the Vedanta AGM I photographed for some years. As well as noisy protests outside the meeting some of these campaigners had bought shares so they had a right to attend the AGMs and ask questions about the companies activities. While their questions were seldom addressed seriously they did greatly embarrass the company and caused som independent shareholders to disinvest.

But Foil Vedanta also did more, and a few days before the final AGM had released a comprehensive report ‘Vedanta’s Billions: Regulatory failure, environment and human rights’ detailing the company’s crimes in all of its operations, and of the City of London’s total failure to regulate Vedanta, or any other criminal mining company and revealing the vast scale of tax evasion and money laundering.

Four years earlier Foil Vedanta had issued another report on the company’s subsidiary mining copper in Zambia, exposing how it had evaded taxes there as well as pollution and environmental problems that other investigations had already reported.

They also supported Zambian communities consistently polluted by Konkola Copper Mines in bringing a case against the company to court in the UK. Vedanta appealed to the Supreme Court against the case being heard in the UK arguing it did not have a duty of care towards persons affected by the operations of a subsidiary company.

Surendra Das of Foil Vedanta commented “Vedanta’s remorseless pollution of the River Kafue since 2005 continues the colonial legacy of environmental racism which made the Zambian Copperbelt a global pollution hotspot. While the financial and material gains from copper have been allowed to flow seamlessly out of the country, justice risks being restricted by economic and institutional barriers of territoriality. We very much hope that the court will enable the fight for justice to continue.“

The Supreme court’s lengthy judgement confirmed that at a duty of care can exist between a parent company and third parties affected by the operations of its subsidiaries.

After the de-listing Vedanta is now a private company so this was the last Vedanta AGM, but protests by Foil Vedanta and the London Mining Network have continued in London against the company which still receives important backing from the City of London, as do other mining companies which are still plundering the world – if not as openly and crookedly as Vedanta.

More at Vedanta’s Final AGM.

Bikes Not Bombs, Tibet, Deportation & Pillow Fight

Back on Saturday 22nd March 2008 I had a rather varied day in London, meeting protesters cycling to Aldermaston on my way to photograph a march for freedom in Tibet, then going to a protest against the deportation of a gay man to Iran and finally to a pillow fight.

Bikes Not Bombs: London – Aldermaston

Bikes Not Bombs, Tibet, Deportation & Pillow Fight

I was on foot and had just come out of Oxford Circus station when I saw the CND Bikes Not Bombs group of cyclists who had begun their ride in Trafalgar Square earlier and were on their way to ride to Aldermaston. Though when I took a few photographs as you can see from the bus they were cycling in exactly the wrong direction, east towards Ilford. Of course they weren’t lost, just trying to attract some attention to the protest, riding with a sound system along London’s busiest shopping street.

I’d thought briefly about taking part myself in the event, as I’d used a bike to get around since I was six, having graduated then from a first a pedal car and then a tricycle. I did own a car briefly when I was around 21, but soon realised it was impractical in cities, expensive, polluting and environmentally unsound and never made the same mistake again.

But for the reasons I listed on My London Diary – sloth, other events, lousy weather and a dislike of early rising – I didn’t join this official ride, though I did cycle on my own from Reading to Aldermaston and back on the following Monday to join the protesters there.

Bikes Not Bombs: London – Aldermaston

Support Tibet March

I was on my way to Park Crescent, a short walk north of the Chinese Embassy where Tibetans and supporters of freedom in Tibet were meeting to march through London on the 49th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising.

Tibet came under effective control of the Chinese government in 1951, when an agreement had been come to the status of Tibet within the recently established People’s Republic of China. In 1949 Tibetan protesters feared the Chinese were about to arrest the 14th Dalai Lama. Protests were at first peaceful but were brutally repressed by the People’s Liberation Army and there was heavy fighting which also involved Tibetan separatists who had been carrying out guerrilla warfare against Chinese forces.

The Dalai Lama fled the country and set up an independent Tibetan government in India, where he still lives – and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. The Tibetan uprising had begun on 10th March 1959 and this day is celebrated each year as Tibetan Uprising Day and Women’s Uprising Day. Since 2009, following protests on 10th March 2008 in Lhasa, the Chinese-controlled authority in Tibet have celebrated the day they fully regained control, 28th March as the national anniversary of Serfs Emancipation Day.

The Tibetan Independence Movement who organise annual protests calling for freedom for Tibet was originally funded and trained by the CIA, but this was withdrawn following Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. And the Dalai Lama who had originally backed it, and who appears as a large photograph carried reverently in the marches, also withdrew support for the independence movement in the 1970s.

It is clear from reports by Amnesty International and others is that there are considerable human rights abuses in Tibet. The 2021 US State Department report listing includes “unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings by the government; torture and cases of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment by the government; arbitrary arrest or detention; political prisoners; politically motivated reprisals against individuals located outside the country; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including censorship; serious restrictions on internet freedom including site blocking; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; severe restrictions on religious freedom….”

Support Tibet March

Defend Mehdi Kazemi – Downing St

But of course human rights are not always respected in this country, and we currently have a government which is proposing to withdraw from some international human rights conventions and proposing racist anti-immigrant policies which are deliberately in breach of them.

Back in 2008, the Labour government was also riding roughshod over the human rights of some immigrants, setting up a system of large-scale detention of asylum seekers and treating individuals unfairly in a bid to outflank the Tories on cutting immigration through blatantly right-wing policies.

Mehdi Kazemi had come to the UK to study after having been involved in a consensual homosexual relationship in Iran. After his boyfriend was executed for this he became a wanted man in Iran and he went to the Netherlands to apply for political asylum.

This was refused as he had come from the UK and so was not allowed under the 2003 Dublin Agreement. The Uk had refused him permission to stay in Britain and were proposing to deport him to Iran where he would be tried and executed.

His case was just one of many where the Home Office were failing to recognise the need for refugees to claim asylum on the grounds of persecution because of their sexual orientation, and for failing to have accurate and up-to-date information on homophobic persecution in countries to which LGBT asylum seekers might be deported.

Support for Kazemi at this protest and by a number of MPs, MEPs and human rights activists did eventually result in the Home Office agreeing to review his case and he was given leave to remain here in May 2008.

Defend Mehdi Kazemi

Flash Mob Global Pillow Fight – Leicester Square

My day ended in very much lighter mood with a pillow fight in Leicester Square, one of many organised in capitals around the world due to kick off at 15.03PM.

I commented: “Of course its a trivial, silly event, but the idea and the kind of organisation involved I think represents something new and exciting, a kind of ‘Demo 2.0’ which we will surely see more of in the future.”

Perhaps this hasn’t had as much impact here in the UK as I had hoped, but I think may have been more important elsewhere in the world. To some extent it has been outgrown as Facebook, Twitter and other social media apps have become more important and even protests organised months and years in advance make use of them.

But it was interesting if rather tricky to photograph, and I got stuck in without a pillow and at some danger to my health, main not “from impact but suffocation when some pillows split open to fill the air with clouds of feathers and feather-dust. At times I wished I was wearing a mask to protect my lungs; keeping my mouth firmly closed and breathing though my nose only stopped the larger particles.“

And I also found the the autofocus on my DSLR was too efficient at focusing on feathers in the air, and until I turned it off and went manual many of my pictures failed to be sharp for the people and pillows behind the screen of feathers.

Later as the pixel count on DSLRs increased and full-frame cameras appeared I found it very useful to work in many situations using just the central ‘DX’ half-frame area of the viewfinder – which would have been very useful to let me see the people and pillows coming for me, but on this occasion I found “chaos really rules taking pictures becomes a press and hope situation. I think some of them do give an idea of what it was like to be there.

Flash Mob Global Pillow Fight

Guantanamo – America’s Shameful Prison

*Amnesty International protesters close to the US Embassy*

January 11th was for quite a few years a busy day for protests; it marked the anniversary of the setting up by the United States of a military prison as a torture camp at the disputed US Guantanamo Bay naval camp on the island of Cuba.

*Prisoners’ had taken turns in the cage overnight*

Set up in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack as a part of George W Bush’s ‘War on Terror’, the camp and the activities which took place there destroyed any final vestige of higher moral ground America could lay claim to in its role of world policeman, something that its various largely clandestine involvements in various South American American coups and activities in the Middle East and elsewhere had already largely laid waste.

Guantanamo is still there, still open, though the great majority of the 779 men brought there have been released. Most were totally innocent, victims of a US policy of offering $5,000 rewards for the capture of ‘terrorists’ to Pakistani and Afghan groups, who took the money for turning in anyone they felt would get them the money.

In October 2021, there were still 39 men held at Guantanamo, including ten who had long been cleared for release. Very few of those held over the years have faced trails trials and very few were involved in any acts of terrorism. Bush and Obama acted slowly but together released well over 700 of the prisoners, but Trump only released one, effectively stopping the process.

Protests continue in the UK, but on a much smaller scale, particularly since the last British resident, Shaker Aamer was released without charge or trial after 13 years of imprisonment and torture in 2015.

In 2008 Amnesty International organised a large protest in Grosvenor Square, a few yards from the US Embassy, though the street in front of the embassy had been closed to prevent protests there. They brought with them two cages, similar to those in which the prisoners were imprisoned outdoors at Guantanamo, with a large group of people wearing the orange jumpsuits which they are made to wear there. Protesters dressed as guards in military style uniforms harassed the ‘prisoners’ interrogating them and threatening them with violence and with aggressive-looking dogs.

From Grosvenor Square I went up to the Regents Park Mosque, where activists from Cageprisoners and the London Guantánamo Campaign, some also in those orange jumpsuits and one manacled hand and foot. There they were handing out leaflets to those attending Friday Prayers.

Later I went with them to Paddington Green Police station, where terrorist suspects are detained and questioned in this country. They were going on to continue to protest in Parliament Square, but I returned first to the US Embassy, where the London Catholic Worker Community was holding a two hour vigil closed to the corner of the Embassy, holding placards and lighting candles for those still held and several who had died there. Several were alleged to have committed suicide, but later evidence emerged strongly suggesting they had died during torture.

The final event of the day was a rally in Parliament Square organised by Cageprisoners and the London Guantánamo Campaign with a number of speakers including Victoria Brittain, former Guantanamo prisoner Moazzam Begg, laywers including Gareth Peirce, Bruce Kent, Yvonne Ridley and Jean Lambert MEP.

It was dark, cold and wet, but those present were cheered by the announcement at the end of the rally that Scotland Yard were investigating allegations of 14 criminal offences committed by Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith and others which resulted in the deaths of Iraqi citizens during the armed invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Unfortunately and predictably these investigations came to nothing, and though the Chilcot report was damning in parts, Blair not only got off scot-free but this New Year was awarded a knighthood. A few days ago one of several petitions to have his “Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter” rescinded reached over a million signatures. Mine was one of them.

Six years of Guantanamo: Amnesty
London Guantanamo Campaign / Cageprisoners
Guantanamo – London Catholic Worker
Guantanamo – Parliament Square Rally

US Shame – Jan 11th

Many commentators after the recent Trump-induced invasion of the US Capitol said that the 6th January 2021 (1/6/21) is a date that will go down in history as a day of shame for the US, comparing it to December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The latter was perhaps a little over the top, as that attack killed 2,403 US personnel, while the death toll after police let Trump supporters in to protest currently stands at five, three of these from health-related issues. But certainly it was a shameful day for US democracy – and a date that might well have been better compared to 1/11/02, 11th January 2002, the date when the first prisoners were held in illegal detention at Guantánamo Bay.

It was five years later than I first photographed a protest against this illegal detention, outside the US Embassy in London, still then in Grosvenor Square, where Amnesty International had brought over a hundred people dressed in orange jump suits to represent the detaines, forming them up into a large block in front of the embassy.

The following year on the sixth anniversary I photographed rather more demonstrations around London. Amnesty were back again outside the US Embassy, though the area in front of the embassy had been sealed off, presumably to prevent the protest taking place there. Instead it was on the street just to one side.

My next stop was the Regents Park Mosque, where I met a group of campaigners, some dressed in the now familiar orange jump suits, from the London Guantánamo Campaign and Cageprisoners who were handing out fliers calling for the closure of the Guantánamo prison camp at various sites around London all day. After giving them to people leaving the Mosque after Friday prayers I went with them to Paddington Green Police Station, where terrorist suspects were normally detained and questioned.

From there I returned to the US Embassy, where the pavement in front was now open again, and a small group from London Catholic Worker had come to hold a vigil. A man from the US Embassy came out and tried to get them to move away, but they stood their ground, lighting a circle of candles as it grew dark.

The final event of the day was a rally in Parliament Square, with speakers including former Guantánamo detainee Moazzam Begg (above) and leading campaigners for the closure of this illegal prison which has cast huge shame on the claims of the USA to be a freedom-loving democracy which upholds international law. Of course those claims have long been known to be largely sham, with the USA backing many of the world’s most repressive regimes, taking part in shady affairs such as the Bay of Pigs attempted invasion, and sponsoring coups such as the 1973 Chilean coup d’état that deposed the Popular Unity government of President Salvador Allende on ‘9/11’ 1973.

Although many detainees have been released – there was no evidence against the great majority who were simply foreigners who far various reasons in the wrong place at the wrong time, many held by militias and sold to the US who were offering considerable bounties – the camp remains open. President Trump in 2018 signed an executive order to keep the detention camp open indefinitely, and currently 40 prisoners remain there, still subject to torture and degrading conditions. Guantánamo remains a shameful blot on the United States.

2007
Close guantanamo 5th anniversary demonstration

2008
Six years of Guantanamo: Amnesty
London Guantanamo Campaign / Cageprisoners
Guantanamo – London Catholic Worker
Guantanamo – Parliament Square Rally

There are reports on many later protests calling for the closure of Guantánamo on My London Diary.

Enforced Disappearance

A post by Shahidul Alam, The journalist who got too close, reminded me of the dangers faced by journalists and photographers in some countries of the world, and in Bangladesh in particular, where extra-judicial killings and ‘disappearances’ are now common, despite government protestations there that they show ‘zero tolerance’ to extra-judicial killings, or torture and death in custody.

Alam writes:

On March 10, 2020, the Bangladesh police registered a case against photojournalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol and 31 others under the country’s draconian Digital Security Act for publishing ‘false, offensive and defamatory’ information on Facebook. He has not been seen since.

You can read more about his case at Amnesty International who have released a video showing CCTV footage of unidentified men interfering with his motorbike outside the offices of his Bangla daily Dainik Pokkhokal for which he was both editor and photojournalist shortly before he left the office and rode away on the evening of 10 March 2020. He has not been seen since. Police filed a new case against him three hours after he was last seen.

You can see a few photographs by Shafiqul Islam Kajol on the Majority World agency web site. His disappearance took place after he and 31 others were accused of publishing “false, offensive and defamatory” information on Facebook. He had been publishing about sex scandals by members of the ruling party. He had previously been badly injured in several attacks when covering their political rallies.