Posts Tagged ‘Christians’

Armenians, Copts and Venezuela – 20 April 2013

Thursday, April 20th, 2023

It’s easy to forget in our current government racist climate towards asylum seekers that Britain has a long history of giving sanctuary to political activists from around the world who have been forced to leave their countries and there are a number of statures, memorials and plaques around the city that remind us of this.

Of course our historical record is blemished; although we supported those striving for freedom from the rule of other European countries, attempts in our own Empire to gain independence were met with often illegal, ruthless and horrific violence as well as deliberate famines starving many of the general population – as in India, Ireland, Kenya and elsewhere.

Despite increasingly draconian laws enacted in recent years Britain remains a relatively free country. Protests are coming under increasing restrictions, but we can still protest although it is now rather more likely we may end up in prison for doing so in any active way – and protesters have even been jailed recently for contempt of court for attempting to defend their actions.

Over the years I’ve covered many protests by communities from other countries living in the UK, often involving people who came here as asylum seekers. Most are protesting in solidarity with protesters and victims in their home countries and some because those at home are unable to protest.

The three events I covered on Saturday 20th April 2013 were taking place for different reasons but all involved people whose origins are in other countries and were protesting about events in those countries, current or historical.


Armenians Remember the Genocide

Armenians, Copts and Venezuela - 20 April 2013

Armenians march through London every year in memory of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey. Beginning in 2015, Turkey arrested around a thousand members of the Armenian community and murdered them, followed by the killing of around 300,000 Armenian conscripts in the Turkish Arm and then “mass killings, deportations and death marches of women, children and elderly men into the Syrian Desert. During those marches, many of the weak or exhausted were killed or died. Women were raped. The deportees were deprived of food and water. Starvation and dehydration became commonplace.”

Armenians, Copts and Venezuela - 20 April 2013

Most of the deaths came in 1915, but massacres and deportations continued on a smaller scale until 1923, with around 1 – 1.5 million people – roughly 70% of the Armenian population in Turkey – being killed.

Armenians, Copts and Venezuela - 20 April 2013

Armenia has an ancient cultural heritage, with the first Armenian state dating back to 860BC, and at times its territory has included large parts of its surrounding countries. It was invaded by many other countries and in the 16th century was divided between the Turkish Ottoman Empire and Persia (Iran.) Russia took over the Iranian area following a war with Persian in the early 19th century.

Armenians, Copts and Venezuela - 20 April 2013

The Armenian Genocide took place during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. After the Turkish revolution of 1908 there had been a massacre of around 20-30,000 Armenians at Adana in 2009. But it was during the First World War when Russia and the Ottoman Empire were fighting each other that the genocide took place, probably as a reaction to Armenian volunteers fighting on the Russian side.

Turkey still denies that the genocide took place, despite the incontrovertible evidence, and say that the deaths were the result of a civil war although the Armenians had no weapons and no military organisation.

Although the UN Commission on Human Rights has described it as genocide and many countries around the world have officially recognised it as such, including the United States, France, and Germany and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland parliaments, the UK government has instead come up with trivial excuses for refusing to do, including the fact that the term genocide was only defined in 1948. When the UN did so then, Raphael Lemkin who had coined the term genocide, described it as “The sort of thing Hitler did to the Jews and the Turks did to the Armenians.”

My London Diary describes the march through London to the Cenotaph, where there were speeches and wreaths were laid. I left the march as it moved off to a service in St Margaret’s Church in Parliament Square.
Armenians Remember the Genocide.


Copts Say End Egyptian Persecution – Old Palace Yard, Westminster

Around the corner from the church I joined UK Copts who were protesting Against the new Muslim Brotherhood led fascist regime in Egypt, which is attacking freedom, muzzling the press, undermining the legal system and encouraging attacks on religious minorities.

The protest followed an attack on April 8th on people leaving a mass funeral in St Mark’s Cathedral, Cairo, for 5 Copts who had been killed in violent clashes in the northern suburbs of the city. As the hundreds of worshippers tried to leave they were attacked with stones and Molotov cocktails thrown from nearby buildings and had to retreat back into the cathedral.

Clashes continued outside the cathedral, Egyptian security forces fired shots into the building and police fired tear gas. One Copt was killed and 84 people including 11 police were injured.

After the attack President Morsi spoke with Pope Tawadros II and issued a statement that he had given orders that the police guard the cathedral and that the state would protect the lives of both Christians and Muslims. But this was just one of many attacks on Copts in Egypt and they feel the authorities are encouraging violence against them.

The Copts see this as part of a growing Islamicisation which is also undermining Egypt’s judicial system, and as a deliberate attack on all opposition, including the liberal and left political opposition as well as all minority religious groups. The stress their protest was not against Muslims but to persuade the British government to stop supporting the current fascist regime in Egypt and to put pressure on the Egyptian government to uphold human and civil rights.

Copts Say End Egyptian Persecution


Stand Off at Venezuela Embassy – South Kensington

Following the death of President Hugo Chávez on 5 March 2013, elections were held in Venezuela on 14 April 2013 which resulted in a close victory with a majoirty of around 223,600 votes for Nicolás Maduro, the successor chosen by Chávez to stand for the United Socialist Party.

Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles refused to accept the result, demanding audits – which confirmed he had lost. Venezuela has a highly sophisticated and automated voting system that left no room for reasonable doubt that he had lost.

Middle-class Venezuelans who oppose Maduro and come along to protest at the embassy, and a wider group of people, mainly South Americans but not all from Venezuela, had come to defend it.

As I commented:

Maduro’s support comes largely from the workers in Venezuela, for whom the Chavez ‘revolution’ has seen real gains, including much improved healthcare. Many of those who were there to support him today had come to Britain as refugees – largely as a result of US-backed military coups in their countries. Their support for Chavez, and after him Maduro is hardly surprising.

More about the protest on My London Diary: Stand Off at Venezuelan Embassy


Shaker, Screws, London Met & Ash Wednesday

Monday, February 13th, 2023

On Wednesday 13th February 2013, ten years ago today, I photographed three protests in Westminster and one on Holloway Road in north London outside London Metropolitan University.


Shaker Aamer – 11 Years in Guantanamo – Parliament Square

Shaker, Screws, London Met & Ash Wednesday

Opposite Parliaments people gathered to mark 11 years since London resident Shaker Aamer was flown to Guantánamo from Afghanistan. He was still being held and tortured there daily despite having been cleared for release by the US over 5 years ago.

Shaker, Screws, London Met & Ash Wednesday

Shaker arrived at Guantanamo on 14th February 2002, having been captured by bandits and sold to the US military while working for a charity in Afghanistan. He was still held and routinely tortured in Guantanamo despite being cleared for release five years earlier as there was no case against him. His youngest son had been born the same day in London where his wife and four children were living.

Shaker, Screws, London Met & Ash Wednesday

A line of protesters held banners across the whole long frontage of Parliament Square facing the Houses of Parliament, with others around the edges of the square handing out fliers. Many people passing were surprised to find that prisoners were still being held there after Obama’s promise to close the camp down, which he appears to have made little effort to keep.

Shaker, Screws, London Met & Ash Wednesday

Continued torture in the camp meant that his health was rapidly failing. Among those at the protest organised by the Save Shaker Campaign and the London Guantánamo Campaign as Green MP Caroline Lucas who held a banner before dashing back to the Commons for Prime Minister’s Questions. The protesters s were still standing there in the freezing cold when I left an hour and a half after the protest had started.

Shaker Aamer – 11 Years in Guantanamo


Prison Officers Protest Against Cuts – Old Palace Yard

A hundred or so prison officers protested against prison closures, overcrowding and privatisation outside the Houses of Parliament after briefing MPs on the dangers of the prison closure programme.

Prison doesn’t work because our prisons are overcrowded and underfunded. It punishes people but almost entirely fails to reform them, to provide them with skills, support and opportunities for when they leave prison – and too many soon return. Our prisons are a training ground for criminality. Government cuts and handing over prisons to be run for profit simply make things worse.

Prison Officers Protest Against Cuts


Victimisation at London Metropolitan University

London Met is a much maligned university largely because it has prided itself on giving chances to many of the more deprived members of the community. It has often ranked high for its teaching quality and giving students greater personal attention than better regarded universities.

The protest outside its Holloway Road buildings in North London was against the suspension of Max Watson, Unison branch chair and Jawad Botmeh, the elected staff governor on false charges. The university had also threatened to de-recognise Unison.

No reasons were given for the suspension which was said to be over a ‘serious matter of concern’ relating to ‘gross misconduct’, but it was thought to relate to the appointment of Botmeh to the staff of the Working Lives Research Institute five years earlier.

Botmeh, a London-based Palestinian science graduate, was arrested in 1995 in connection with a bomb attack on the Israeli embassy the previous year. There was no direct evidence connecting him to the bombing but he was sentenced to 20 years in what was widely seen as a miscarriage of justice. His convictions were declared when he was appointed as a researcher by London Met after his release. The two men, along with another man suspended later were re-instated the following month.

Victimisation at London Met


Ash Wednesday – Ministry of Defence

Christian peace activists and friends held their annual Ash Wednesday liturgy at the Ministry of Defence in London, calling for repentance and taking symbolic actions including some who risked arrest by marking the buildings with charcoal.

During the service in front of the Ministry people tied purple ribbons on a cross and prayers were said for the victims of ware and the warmongers called on to repent and change their ways.

There was then a march around the war minstry before the group returned to write the word ‘REPENT’ in water and ashes on the pavement outside and the liturgy continued,

ending with a large circle in the adjoining Embankment gardens.

As the service ended, police briefly held a woman who had jumped over a fence and begun to write a cross and the word Repent on the Defence Ministry wall in charcoal. She was stopped with the word half written, and after a few minutes was released.

More on My London Diary at Ash Wednesday – Ministry of Defence


PIP, NHS, Trident & Wood St Cleaners

Wednesday, July 13th, 2022

PIP, NHS, Trident & Wood St Cleaners – On Wednesday 13th July 2016 I photographed two protests about the inadequate and badly run Personal Independence Payments for disabled people, a protest supporting a cross-party bill to save the NHS from privatisation, a party against replacing Trident and the longest running strike in the history of the City of London.


PIP Fightback at Vauxhall – Vauxhall

PIP, NHS, Trident & Wood St Cleaners

The hardest part of photographing the protest at the Vauxhall PIP Consultation Centre was actually finding the place, hidden away in a back street. This was one of around 20 protests around the country at the centres where ATOS carry out sham Personal Independence Payments ‘assessments’ on behalf of the DWP.

PIP, NHS, Trident & Wood St Cleaners

The assessments are almost solely designed to save money for the DWP, enabling them to ignore medical evidence of need and are carried out by people who are given a financial incentive to fail claimants. They often mean that genuine claimants lose essential benefits for months before they are restored on appeal. They have led to many becoming desperate, with some needing hospital treatment and a few have committed suicide after being failed.

PIP Fightback at Vauxhall


NHS Bill protest at Parliament – Old Palace Yard, Westminster

Labour MP for Wirral West Margaret Greenwood was later in the day presenting a ‘Ten Minute Rule Bill’ with cross-party support to stop the privatisation of the NHS and return it to its founding principles.

People from various campaigns had come out to support the bill, which although it had no chance of progressing into law did lead to a greater awareness of the privatisation which is slowly but apparently inevitably putting our NHS into the hands of private, mainly American, health companies, and eroding its basic principles.

Among those who came out to speak was Shadow Health Minister Diane Abbott.

NHS Bill protest at Parliament


Disabled PIP Fightback blocks Westminster

Campaigners from Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN), Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and Winvisible (Women with Invisible and Visible Disabilities) and other supporters met outside the Victoria St offices of Capita PLC, one of the companies along with ATOS responsible for carrying out the shoddy cash-saving PIP assessments.

In particular these assessments are unfair on many claimants whose conditions vary day to day including many with mental health issues. The assessments make no allowances for this and fail to take any account of the medical evidence in coming to their conclusions.

After protesting for some time on the very busy pavement where there were a number of speakers, Paula Peters of DPAC led the group out into the the middle of Victoria Street where they stood with banners and in wheelchairs blocking traffic.

They then marched the short distance to the DWP headquarters in Caxton St, holding a further protest with speakers in the road outside.

Finally they marched past the Houses of Parliament to College Green where the media had set up their ‘Westminster village’ crowded with cameras for Theresa May becoming Prime Minister. Police stopped them as they tried to go onto the grass in front of the TV cameras, and for some time they stood along the side before finally ignoring the police and going on to the green. Where the TV crews ignored the protest.

Disabled PIP Fightback blocks Westminster


Trident Mad Hatters Tea Party – Parliament Square

CND members and supporters were today lobbying MPs against plans to replace Trident at a cost of at least £205 billion.

In Parliament Square they had organised a ‘Trident Mad Hatters Tea Party’ and there were various Christian groups with placards placards stating the opposition by churches of the different denominations to the replacement, with Buddhists from the Battersea Peace Pagoda adding their support.

Trident Mad Hatters Tea Party


Solidarity for Wood St Cleaners – City of London

Finally I went to the heart of the CIty of London where a rally was taking place in support of cleaners belonging to the United Voices of the World union employed by anti-union cleaning contractor Thames Cleaning at the 100 Wood St offices managed by CBRE.

By 13th July this had already become the longest-running strike ever in the City of London and it continued into August. The UVW say:

As days became weeks, the inconvenience for white-collar workers at 100 Wood Street rightly turned into a major embarrassment for their employers, and especially for CBRE, the managers of the building. City of London police were called many times, security staff were intimidating, and the tenants were barely coping with a trickle of the former cleaning operation. Eventually, after a surprise flashmob in the CBRE’s lobby, and then a big march to mark the 50th consecutive day, the decision was taken after 61 days to raise all their pay to the London Living Wage!

https://www.uvwunion.org.uk/en/campaigns/100-wood-street/

Many more pictures at Solidarity for Wood St cleaners.