Tag: Egyptian President

Daily Mail, Kurdistan, Muslim Brotherhood & Iraq – 2013

Daily Mail, Kurdistan, Muslim Brotherhood & Iraq: On Sunday 6th October 2013 I photographed a protest against the Daily Mail, Kurds marching calling for their leader to be released from Turkish jail, protests for and against the removal of President Morsi of Egypt and a protest calling for the release of hostages in Iraq.

Daily Mail You Told All the Lies – Kensington

Daily Mail, Kurdistan, Muslim Brotherhood & Iraq

The Daily Mail has a long history of publishing lies against the BBC, NHS, public sector workers, trade unionists, socialists, women, Muslims, travellers and others, but the protest came after people were outraged by their smears and distortion in an entirely unfair attack of Ralph Milliband.

Daily Mail, Kurdistan, Muslim Brotherhood & Iraq

Their campaign against the father of Ed Milliband was intended to discredit the then Labour leader and Leader of the Opposition and many felt the Daily Mail had gone over the line of what is acceptable in British politics with their headline ‘MAN WHO HATED BRITAIN’, based on an out of context adolescent observation. Of course things in our press have worsened since then, particularly in the orchestrated attacks on Jeremy Corbyn accusing him of anti-semitism.

Daily Mail, Kurdistan, Muslim Brotherhood & Iraq

Ralph Milliband had fled Belgium with his working class Polish Jewish family in 1940 aged 16 when Germany invaded the country and went on to serve in the Royal Navy during the war. He settled in London after the war and became a British subject in 1948. As a sociologist he became one of the most respected academics of the post-war period, respected by people across the political spectrum.

Daily Mail, Kurdistan, Muslim Brotherhood & Iraq

The Daily Mail had supported the Blackshirts and Hitler in the 1930s and continued after the war to express hate for most of those institutions that have truly made Britain great – like the welfare state, the NHS and the BBC and the public sector generally. And more recently it had backed French fascist Marine Le Pen.

Daily Mail, Kurdistan, Muslim Brotherhood & Iraq

The protest was organised by The People’s Assembly, a nationwide group set up in opposition to the current government’s austerity programme and to defend the provision of education, health and welfare from general taxation and available to all. Several hundred came to the show they were proud of Britain and its welfare state and there was a great deal of chanting against the Daily Mail and and some songs before two people delivered boxes of a petition to their offices and the speeches began.

Daily Mail You Told All the Lies

Freedom for Ocalan & Kurdistan – Wood Green

The speeches agains the Daily Mail were continuing as I rushed away to Wood Green in North London where Kurds were marching on the 15th anniversary of the kidnappping of their national leader Abdullah Ocalan by Turkey in 1998.

Since then Ocalan has been held, mainly in solitary confinement, in a Turkish prison.

I left the march as it went past Wood Green Station on its way to the Kurdish Community Centre in Haringey to make my way to Mayfair and the Egyptian Embassy

Freedom for Ocalan & Kurdistan

Egypt For & Against Muslim Brotherhood – Egyptian Embassy

Opposite the Embassy in South Street were a group of protesters supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and opposing what the military coup which had recently removed the Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi the suppression of protests in Egypt against this.

Many carried placards showing the R4BIA four finger and thumb on palm sign to show support, begun after a Muslim Brotherhood sit-in at the Rabaa Al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo was violently attacked by the military in August 2013 – Rabaa is ‘four’ or ‘fourth’ in Arabic.

A short distance away a smaller group of Egyptians protested, many carrying pictures of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the Minister of Defense and Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces who had led the coup and the massacres of protesters – a total of around 3,000 were killed and almost 19,000 arrested, They supported the removla of Morsi, who after a narrow win in the 2012 election had granted himself unlimited powers and issued an Islamist-backed draft constitution.

Sisi installed himself as leader and became president after elections in 2014, remaining in power as a dictator since then (including two further elections in which other candidates were barred from running or boycotted the election due to repression – said to be even worse than under Mubarak who had been forced to step down by the popular revolution in 2011.

Egypt For & Against Muslim Brotherhood

PMOI call for release of 7 Hostages in Iraq – Trafalgar Square

Finally in Trafalgar Square I photographed an elaborate display by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, the PMOI (aka MEK and MKO) which since 1986 had been exiled in Iraq (and is now in Albania.)

Photographs of the 52 killed by Iraqi forces on 1st September

After the 2003 Iraq invasion the MEK came to a ceasefire agreement with the USA, giving up their weapons – which included 19 British-made Chieftain tanks. When the USA left Iraq they were left at the mercy of the Iraqi authorities and have been subjected to a long history of attacks on their refugee camp.

Seven hostages are sill held in Baghdad

The latest of these, ordered by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Mailki, was at Camp Ashraf on September 1, 2013 and killed 52 with 7 hostages taken and held in the Baghdad Green Zone. In response hunger strikes started at Camp Ashraf and in Geneva, Berlin, Ottawa, Melbourne as well as London where they set up a camp in front of the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.

A line of hunger strikers, on the 36 day of their strike, was seated at the front of the audience at today’s rally, holding roses and taking an active part in the event, raising their fists and shouting.

The rally called for immediate release of the seven prisoners, and for UN forces to be stationed permanently at Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty to provide the protection the PMOI, who the UN granted asylum status.

PMOI call for release of 7 Hostages in Iraq

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London, Dec 1st 2012

Adidas ‘Pay Your Workers’

December 1st 2012 was a Saturday and another busy day for protests over various issues in London. The poor are always with us because employers pay rock-bottom wages, even those who sell high-priced goods on London’s premier shopping streets.

But the protest outside Adidas in Oxford Street was not about the poorly paid staff in their store, but about the workers who make their sportswear in Indonesia who make the sportswear they sell and who have not been paid what Adidas owe them for over a year.

The PT Kizone factory in Indonesia had been making sportswear for Adidas, Nike and Dallas Cowboys for many years with many workers being on pitifully low wages, many being paid as little as US $0.60 an hour (37p), hardly enough to keep them alive. But in January 2011 the factory owner fled and the factory closed in April 2011 and the 2,800 workers were left with no jobs.

Under Indonesian law they were entitled to severance pay, a total of around US$2.8 million (about £1.74 million) and the three companies for whom they had made goods for many years were obliged to share the payments. Both Nike and Dallas Cowboys agreed to pay up, but Adidas are refusing to pay the $1.8 million (£1.12 million) they owe, despite a worldwide campaign with a 50,000 signature petition and 5000 posts on their Facebook page demanding they pay.

On December 1st there were protests outside Adidas stores in London and other cities in the UK, with some protesters wearing masks with the face of Justin Bieber, who is the ‘global style icon’ for their NEO label. The protesters point out that Adidas were “happy to pay their $157m to sponsor the Olympics, but won’t pay 1% of that to avoid the destitution of those that made them their profits.”

Adidas ‘Pay Your Workers’

Free West Papua Independence Day

A short distance away at the Indonesian Embassy in Grosvenor Square another protest was taking place against the Indonesian occupation of West Papua in 1962.

On December 1st 1961, West Papua had been set on the road to independence by the Dutch. The Netherlands had controlled the area since 1898 except during the wartime Japanese occupation. Indonesia had become independent in 1945 and claimed all of the Dutch territories in the area, leading to a long-running dispute between the two countries, and just over two weeks later began moving troops into West Papua, and were in the whole area by the end of the following year. But it was due to the United States fear of Soviet influence in Indonesia that the Dutch finally temporarily transferred the control of the region to Indonesian government as a part of the New York Agreement, which called for a later UN referendum on the future of the country.

This referendum took place in 1969, and although called the Act of Free Choice, involved voting by 1025 men and women selected by the Indonesian military who unsurprisingly voted unanimously in favour of Indonesian control. Since then the Free Papua movement has worked to gain independence both by peaceful protest and international pressure but also by guerilla warfare.
Free West Papua Independence Day

Morsi’s Dicatatorial Decree

The Egyptian Embassy is short distance to the south in Mayfair, and in front of it there were over 50 protesters shouting noisily condemning the decree by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and calling him a dictator. A few yards down the street, separated by police was a protest by 5 of supporters of his action.

This was one of widespread protests in Egypt and around the world which led to the president announcing the decree would be scrapped a week later. But he proceeded with bringing in a new constitution which was described by many as an ‘Islamist Coup’ and was approved by a referendum later in the month.


Morsi’s Dicatatorial Decree

Climate March Says ‘NO’ to Fracking

The day’s largest event also started in Mayfair, outside the US Embassy, still in Grosvenor Square. It was the Global Day of Action on Climate Change, and the protest focused attention on the dangers of using shale oil and tar sands for energy, both of which would lead to excessive global warming and make reaching the targets set for carbon emissions impossible.

The US embassy was chosen for the starting rally as the dirty energy lobby in the USA, led by companies including the Koch Brothers, has succeeded in making the US the main barrier to effective climate action over the years.

After the rally they began to lay a mock pipeline from the US Embassy to the Canadian Canadian High Commission at the opposite end of Grosvenor Square to show their outrage at the continued exploitation of high-carbon tar sands. They had brought an impressive number of long pipes for the purpose, but they were not allowed to lay them in the direct route across the square, so didn’t quite make it going around the outside.

The thousand or so marchers then set off towards Parliament Square while I went to cover some of the events elsewhere before meeting them again in Parliament Square just before they erected a mock fracking rig with the message ‘No Fracking in the UK’. After this the rally there continued with speeches from Eve Macnamara from REAF (Ribble Estuary against Fracking), John McDonnell MP (Labour, Hayes and Harlington) and Natalie Bennett (leader, Green party).

Climate March Says ‘NO’ to Fracking