Guantanamo Day – 11th January: Today is the 23rd anniversary of the setting up by U.S. President George W. Bush of the illegal prison camp at Guantanamo Bay inside the US Naval base on Cuba.
Bush had issued a military order in November 2001 “for the indefinite detention of foreign nationals without charge and preventing them from legally challenging their detention” and to their shame the US Department of Justice claimed that the principle of ‘habeas corpus‘ did not apply to the camp as it was not on US territory.
At first a temporary camp called ‘Camp X-Ray’ was set up at Guantanamo and the first twenty detainees arrived there on 11 January 2002. Later they were moved to a more permanent Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
The US administration argued that the site was not US territory as it was only held under a lease from Cuba last updated in 1934 “under which Cuba retains ultimate sovereignty but the U.S. exercises sole jurisdiction.” Cuba since the 1959 revolution has argued that the US presence there is illegal and has called repeatedly for them to leave and return the territory to Cuba.
The USA also argued that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to ‘unlawful enemy combatants’, and went ahead holding prisoners there in cruel, inhumane and degrading conditions and torturing them. The Wikipedia article gives some details of the condemnations by the Red Cross and human rights organisations as well as the testimonies of released prisoners.
There was little if any evidence against great majority of the at least 780 men who were held in Guantanamo and most were finally released without charge, although today 15 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay. Nine died while being held there. Only 16 detainees have ever been charged by the U.S. with criminal offences. Most were just foreigners who were in Afghanistan for various reasons and were captured and sold to the US forces by bounty hunters.
The last detainee with a British connection to be released was Shaker Aamer, born in Saudi Arabia but with British Resident status and a wife and family in Battersea, London who had gone to Afghanistan as a charity worker. He was captured by bandits and sold to the US in December 2001 and transferred to Guantanamo on 14 February 2002 after having been interrogated and tortured in the prison at the US Bagram air base. He was eventually released in October 2015 having been held for over thirteen years.
Green MEP for London Jean Lambert
Some large protests against Guantanamo took place in London over the years, as well as smaller regular vigils at the US Embassy and in front of Parliament. I photographed many of these over the years, putting accounts and pictures on My London Diary as well as sending them to agencies. The pictures here come from my post about a small protest by active campaigners against the camp at the US Embassy on Monday 11th January 2010, Guantanamo Bay – 8 Shameful Years.
UK Uncut, Syria, Iraq, Egypt & More – Saturday 17th December was a busy day for me in London, with three protests by UK Uncut over companies not paying their share of tax in the UK, protests by Kurds over the massacres in Syria, Iraqis celebrating the withdrawal of US troops, Syrian supporters of President Bashar al-Assad demanding no US intervention in Syria, protests by Congolese over the rigged elections and atrocities, Egyptians against the military attacks on protesters and a birthday protest for Bradley – later Chelsea – Manning.
Now at last Assad is gone though the future in Syria is still uncertain, Manning is long out of jail, but companies are still finding ways to avoid paying tax. The Congo and Egypt are still both suffering. More about the protests and many more images on My London Diary – links for each event.
UK Uncut Santa Calls on Dave Hartnett – HMRC, Parliament St
UK Uncut’s Santa, along with two helpers called at the Westminster offices of the head of UK’s tax collection with a present and a card. but unfortunately Dave Hartnett was not at home.
Supporters of UK Uncut protested briefly inside the Oxford Circus Topshop at the failure of Arcadia group to pay UK tax on its UK earnings, continuing their protest on the pavement outside until cleared away by police.
Protesters hold a banner naming Vodaphone as tax dodgers and reminding them they owe us £6 billion
After their protest at Topshop had been moved away by police, UK Uncut moved to Vodaphone to protest about their dodging of UK tax. Police kept them a few yards from the shop but otherwise did not interfere with the peaceful demonstration.
Kurds Call For A Stop To Syrian Massacres – Downing St
The Syrian Kurdish community protested at Downing St as massacres continue in Syria, calling for Britain to help to stop them. They want freedom for Syria and also for Kurds in Syria in a federation to replace the Assad regime.
Congolese continued their protests in London against the election fraud, rapes and massacres and called on the British government to withdraw its support from the immoral regime of President Kabila responsible for the atrocities and voted out by the people. I had photographed two larger protests earlier in the month at Congolese Protest Against Kabila Vote-Rigging and Congolese Election Protests Continue.
Iraqis and Syrians Protest At US Embassy – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
Iraqis celebrate victory over the US but want all mercenaries to leave and the BBC to report fairly
Iraqis met to celebrate their defeat of the occupation on the day US troops left Iraq, and called for the mercenaries to go too, as well as for proper coverage of Iraq by the BBC. They were joined by Syrian supporters of President Bashar al-Assad, at the embassy to demand no US intervention in Syria.
Bradley Manning Birthday Demo – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
It was the 24th birthday of Bradley Manning, who was in court for disclosing US documents to Wikileaks
Supporters of Bradley Manning held a vigil at the US Embassy on Saturday afternoon, his 24th birthday, and on the second day of his pre-trail hearing, calling him an American Peace Hero.
Egyptians Protest Against Attacks on Protesters – Egyptian Embassy, Mayfair
News of the deaths and injuries in Cairo as armed forces attacked protesters prompted Egyptians to protest at the London Embassy, calling for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to halt the attacks and hand over power.
Stop Fossil Fuel Dirty Money takeover of US: The headline I wrote for the events of Wednesday 7th November 2012 could well have been written for this year’s US elections where Trump’s whole career in politics has been supported by fossil fuel companies.
Huge lobbying by these companies and a deliberate campaign of misinformation and pseudoscience, financing studies which cast doubt or contradict the scientific consensus of global warming happening because of fossil fuel use has resulted in US governments not taking effective action against these polluters.
According to the chairman of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, the Republican Party is controlled by the fossil fuel industry and as well as huge subsidies also gets “the license to pollute for free.”
Under the Democrats the US has finally taken some limited action with promises to phase out fossil fuel use but the government in 2022 still supplied around $15 billion a year in subsidies to the industry.
The protest in 2012 was calling on President Obama “to stand up against the lobbying, dirty money and media lies funded by the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel companies.” He didn’t.
You can read more about the protest, which began outside the London offices of the Koch Brothers, Koch International in Fenchurch St at the heart of the City of London with a huge banner ‘KOCH BROTHERS – DIRTY MONEY – FUNDING CLIMATE DENIAL’ on My London Diary.
A high wind made it difficult to hold up the banner while the protest continued with speeches. But the big banner certainly attracted a great deal of attention, though soon they had to take it down as it became impossible to hold. But there were plenty of placards showing heads of prominent US right wing politicians and media commentators, each with their names and some ridiculous quotations related to climate change, as well as those of Obama and Romney and the two Koch brothers, along with some smaller banners.
There was another big banner of the side of the open-top bus which the Campaign Against Climate Change had hired to take the protesters to the US Embassy.
I went with them for what was probably the most uncomfortable bus journey of my life. It was cold in the strong icy wind and the bus bumped and lurched ridiculously.
It was hard to keep standing as I took pictures and I had to hold on with one hand all the time, using the other to take pictures. There wasn’t a great deal of light and getting sharp pictures at 1/30 f4 (full aperture for my wideangle zoom) was difficult with the bouncing and vibration of the bus.
Somehow I managed, and Phil Thornhill managed to to use the megaphone, at least during some of the halts in traffic. But I was very pleased (and very frozen) when we arrived and got off the bus in Grosvenor Square.
Police at Grosvenor Square tried to herd the protesters into a small pen in a dark corner, but they refused and were finally allowed to go in front of the locked main entrance gates, with those faces and their quotations peering over the hedge from the gardens behind the main actors and speakers.
Nakba, NHS, Guantánamo, Sri Lanka: On Saturday 18th May 2013 I began work outside Parliament at a protest against Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, then went across the Thames to the Festival Hall for the start of a march to defend the NHS before going the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square for a ‘murder scene’ in solidarity with hunger strikers at Guantánamo. There I also photographed a woman protesting for the release of her husband arrested 9 years ago by US forces in Iraq. Finally I met a march by several thousands of Tamils calling for and end to the continuing genocide in Sri Lanka. You will find much more detail (and many more pictures) on each of these protests at links below to My London Diary.
End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing – Old Palace Yard, Westminster
65 years after 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes as refugees in the ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe) when Israel was created, Palestinians call for an end to the continuing ethnic cleansing and a boycott and sanctions until Israel complies with international law.
Several hundred people came to the protest, including a group of extreme orthodox Neturei Karta Jews who see themselves as guardians of the true Jewish faith, and reject Zionism, as well as many of Jewish or Palestinian origin. As well as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign the protest was also supported by many other groups – a long list on My London Diary – and speeches were continuing when I left for another event.
London Marches to Defend NHS – South Bank to Whitehall
Thousands had gathered by the Festival Hall to march against cuts, closures and privatisation of the NHS, including many groups opposed to hospital closures around London, trade unionists and others concerned the the government is ending the NHS.
An unprecedented coalition of Londoners, including medical staff, trade unions, health campaigners, patients and others have been alarmed at what they see as an attack by the government on the principles that underlie our National Health Service and the threats of closure of Accident and Emergency facilities, maternity units and hospital wards which seem certain to lead to our health system being unable to cope with demand – and many lives put at risk.
You can read more about the crisis in the NHS in 2013 in the post on My London Diary, but of course this has continued and is still making the news. Despite their protestations it seems clear that the Tories are trying hard to run down the NHS so that the population lose its trust and love for our universal free public – and would allow them to eventually replace it with US-style insurance based healthcare which would greatly increase costs and generate huge profits for private health companies.
I went with the march across Waterloo Bridge and down Strand to Charing Cross, leaving it as it was waiting to enter Whitehall for a rally there.
Guantánamo Murder Scene – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
London Guantánamo Campaign staged a ‘murder scene’ at the US Embassy on the 101st day of the Guantánamo Hunger Strike in which over 100 of the 166 still held there are taking part, with many including Shaker Aamer now being forcibly fed.
As I arrived there were 8 black-hooded ‘prisoners’ in orange suits lying on the pavement, the number of prisoners who have died there in suspicious circumstances who had previously taken part in sustained hunger strikes. At least seven of them had the cause of death reported as ‘suicide’.
Other protesters drew lines around the bodies on the ground and surrounded the area with ‘Crime Scene – Do Not Enter‘ incident tape. The bodies then stood up and there was a short enactment of forced feeding by a man wearing an Obama mask.
Others held placards and posters, some including quotations from Thomas Jefferson and other historic and prominent Americans, and there were speeches about the events in Guantanamo, where British resident Shaker Aamer was still held despite having been cleared for release. You can read more, including a statement by one of the organisers, on My London Diary.
As I left some of the poems written in Guantánamo by Shaker Aamer were being read.
More US Embassy Protests – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
Also protesting outside the embassy as she has for a number of weekends was Narmeen Saleh Al Rubaye, born in the US and currently living in Birmingham, whose husband Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American citizen, was arrested in Iraq by American forces in 2004 and turned over to Iraqi custody in 2011. He was tortured by the Americans when held by them, and his now being tortured by the Iraqis. He is also on hunger strike. His young daughter Zeinab came and spoke briefly to the Guantanamo protesters, telling them that she wanted her daddy to be released.
Later she was joined by a small group of Muslim men and boys who stood with her.
It was a busy day for protests at at the US Embassy were a small group of supporters of Syrian President Assad, including some from the minor Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) who had come to protest against western intervention in Syria.
Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide – Hyde Park to Waterloo Place
Finally I rushed away to join thousands of British Tamils and dignitaries and politicians from India, Sri Lanka and the UK who were marching through London on the 4th anniversary of the Mullivaikkal Massacre. Many were dressed in black in memory of the continuing genocide in Sri Lanka and some wore the tiger emblem and called for a Tamil homeland – Tamil Eelam.
Tamils are disgusted at the lack of response by the UK, the Commonwealth and the world to the organised genocide that took place and is still continuing in Sri Lanka, of which the massacre at Mullivaikkal four years ago was a climax. I noted on My London Diary that I could see no other non-Tamil photographers covering the event.
On My London Diary you can read a statement by the British Tamil Forum who had organised the march. I left as the rally in Waterloo Place was about to start, partly because I was tired but also because I thought few of the speeches would be in English.
Disabled Welfare Reform & Syria: On Saturday 28th January 2012 I photographed two major protests in London, with disabled protesters calling for the dropping of the Welfare Reform Bill and later several groups of protesters outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square arguing for various reasons against US or Western Intervention in Iran or Syria.
Disabled People Against Cuts, DPAC, protested at Oxford Circus, chaining wheelchairs together & calling for the dropping of Welfare Reform Bill, urging savings cutting tax evasion by the rich rather than penalising the poor and disabled.
I met with some of the protesters outside Holborn Station and others who had arrived by taxi at Great Portland Street. I’m not sure why they had chosen these two meeting points as they are both – like most Central London stations – without step-free access. London Underground has been painfully slow in providing disabled access.
I went with them from Great Portland Street to Oxford Circus where they met up with others who had just begun to block the road, going in a line across the end of Regent Street when the lights changed to allow pedestrians to cross and passing a chain through their wheelchairs which they locked to posts on each side.
Others walked on the road with placards and banners to support them, but there were enough police in the area to enable them to stop the protesters blocking Oxford Street.
Selma James speaking
Among groups supporting DPAC’s protest were UK Uncut, the Greater London Pensioners and the women’s groups from the Crossroads Centre in north London who had brought their public address system.
Shortly after the street band Rhythms of Resistance turned up and added their sounds to the protest.
Police had quickly managed to divert traffic on streets to get around the protest and were having discussions about how to handle the protest. A FIT team had arrived to photograph everyone (press included) and TSG officers were standing nearby with bolt cutters. But arresting people in wheelchairs is difficult as police need to supply suitable safe transport.
Eventually the officer in charge read out a statement telling the protesters their presence on the road is breaking the law – as of course they knew. He and other officers then went to ask the protesters if they would move. They didn’t and some got out their own handcuffs to handcuff themselves to the chain.
Police kept smiling and talking to the protesters, waiting for them to leave rather than trying to move or arrest them. Eventually after about an hour and a half they did so, having decided they had made their point successfully and it was time to pack up. Probably too nature was beginning to call!
The protest attracted a great deal of coverage in the press for the campaign, while earlier efforts to get their arguments against the bill including earlier less active protests have received very little publicity.
Tony Benn started the speeches. Jeremy Corbyn waits to speak
I’d left a few minutes before the DPAC protest ended to walk to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square where Stop the War were holding a protest against sanctions and war on Iran and Syria.
When I arrived I found a very confusing situation with several groups of protesters and some noisy heckling with scuffles with the Stop the War stewards.
I think everyone there was against US or Western Intervention in Iran or Syria, but some noisy protests which came to a head while Abbas Eddalat of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran was speaking, from protesters representing the Free Iran ‘Green Movement’ who wanted to make a clear statement of their opposition to the current Iranian regime with its religious bigotry and persecution.
The stewards first tried to argue with them but soon became physical, pushing them roughly away from the protest. Supporters of the Iranian regime joined in along with supporters of Syrian President Asad.
Police seemed bewildered as they tried to sort out the various groups – and there were also some Kurds with a large Iraqi Kurdistan flag.
Eventually the Free Iran protesters were persuaded to hold their own separate protest a few yards away in front of the embassy, though some of them rejoined the Stop the War protest later. Another group, Hands Off the People of Iran were also present and handing out leaflets, against Stop the War which has favoured links with supporters of the regimes in both Syria and Iran.
Police briefly held one young man who was wearing the current Iraqi flag but then released him, with a police officer trying to prevent press taking pictures, saying “He has a right to privacy” – which clearly as I told the officer he has not under UK law when protesting on the public street.
Then there were ‘Anonymous’ in their ‘V for Vendetta’ masks protesting on the other side of the hedge around the gardens to the main protest, and later Stop the War stewards again sprung into action to stop the free expression of dissent when pro-Asad Syrians began their own protest.
Various speakers including Tony Benn, Lindsey German, John McDonnell and others made a clear case against any Western intervention at the main rally – and I give some of their arguments on My London Diary.
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.
Starving Palestine and a Mad Emitters Tea Party: London Saturday 20th May 2006
Stop Starving Palestine! – March for Palestine
After Hamas, a Sunni-Islamic militant nationalist political movement won a majority of seats in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections, Israel had imposed an economic blockade and both the US and EU withdrew their support.
This led to more than two-thirds of the people in the country being below the poverty line, lacking basic necessities such as sugar, oil, milk, and even bread is rationed. A ban on the import of vital medicines threatened many lives.
Around 20,000 people came to the Stop Starving Palestine! march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and supported by many other organisations including peace groups, the Muslim Association Of Britain and leading trade unions.
Among the speakers were Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, Baroness Jenny Tonge of the Lib Dems and Manuel Hassassian, the Palestine Liberation Organisation representative to the UK (appointed by the Palestinian President as Ambassador but not recognised by the UK.)
As usual there were many Jewish protesters among the marchers, most noticeable of whom were Neturei Karta orthodox Jews who had walked from Stamford Hill on the Sabbath to attest to their support for Palestinians and their opposition to Zionism.
I left the event as the rally in Trafalgar Square began to go to Grosvenor Square.
Bush in Wonderland, a Mad Emitters Tea Party – US Embassy
Campaign Against Climate Change had organised “bush in wonderland, a mad emitters tea party” held outside the heavily barricaded front of the US embassy in Grosvenor Square. The party was a part of an ongoing series of protests including a weekly climate vigil outside the embassy taking place since the breakdown of The Hague Climate Talks in November 2000.
“There was a picnic table with sandwiches, cakes and tea, music from the eco warriors and guests with some appropriate lyrics, as well as samba from rhythms of resistance, and fancy dress. balloons, banners and a short speech by a White Rabbit called Phil reminded us of the need for protests like these. “
“The USA continues not only to pollute on a massive scale, but increasingly acts to sabotage international efforts to take any effective action on climate change.”
Protests such as this, publications by groups of leading scientists and COP talks after COP talks have done a little to move things on, but the climate situation has worsened and actions taken by governments so far are woefully inadequate.
The USA improved its rhetoric under Obama but didn’t do much and it went backwards under Trump. Biden has also failed to make the real changes needed – and like most politicians is still living in Wonderland rather than the real world.
Politicans are still pursuinging economic polices based on infinite growth under capitalism and we need to move to a new economics which recognises that we live on a planet with finite resources both physical and in the natural world and we need to move to living within sustainable limits.
Saturday 5th February 2011 US Embassy Rally For Egypt – Grosvenor Square Egyptian Embassy Demonstration – South St Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain at Egyptian Embassy – South St
Tariq Ali speaking at the rally at the US Embassy
Egypt’s history is long and complex, going back to the back to the 6th–4th millennia BCE when it was one of the cradles of Western civilisation. Wikipedia has a lengthy article which even so skims over the many details, and certainly I won’t go into much here.
For many years Egypt was a part of the Ottoman Empire, but after the building of the Suez Canal in 1869 France and Britain played a more important role in its history and in 1882 the UK invaded the country which became occupied and it became a de facto British protectorate, breaking away completely to become a UK protectorate during the First World War after the UK military deposed the ruling Khedive, replacing him with his pro-British brother Hussein Kamel, who declared himself Sultan of Egypt.
Elections at the end of the war led to a majority for the Egyptian nationalist movement, so the British exiled their leaders to Malta in 1919, starting the first modern Egyptian revolution. The UK caved in and granted Egypt independence, though largely nominally as the country remained under British military occupation until 1936 when the UK withdrew its troops except those around the Suez Canal.
During World War Two, Egypt tried to remain neutral despite considerable UK pressure and the presence of large numbers of British troops, who in 1942 surrounded the palace in Cairo and forced King Farouk to change his government.
In 1951, Egypt demanded all remaining British troops who were then around the Suez Canal to leave the country, but the UK refused. British soldiers killed 43 Egyptian police officers in an police station at Ismalia and extensive riots followed. On 22-23 July 1952 military officers launched a coup d’état against King Farouk and took power; in June 1953 they declared Egypt a republic, with Gamal Abdel Nasser becoming Prime Minister, becoming President in 1956.
After Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal that year the UK and France together with Israel launched a disastrous attack – the Suez Crisis. The UK and France were humiliated after they were forced to withdraw by pressure from the UN, USA and Russia. The event is widely seen as marking the end of Great Britain’s role as one of the world’s major powers. Perhaps why we cling on to a hopelessly ineffectual “nuclear deterrent”.
At the Egyptian Embassy
After Nasser’s death in 1970, Anwar Sadat took over as president until 1981, when he was assassinated by an Islamic extremist. Sadat expelled the Soviet advisers and attempted to modernise Egypt, encouraging foreign investment but his policies mainly benefited wealthier Egyptians.
Hosni Mubarak became president in 1981 following a referendum in which he was the only candidate. Under him draconian laws against freedom of expression and association were enacted, and political activities largely outlawed. In 2005 he enacted reforms which allowed for multi-candidate elections of the presidency but with severe restrictions on who could stand – and the candidate who got most votes after Mubarak was imprisoned after the vote.
Human rights organisations in 2006-7 had detailed serious violations, including outine torture, arbitrary detentions and trials before military and state security courts, and naming Egypt as an international centre for torture in the US led ‘War on Terror’. In 2007 the constitution was altered, giving the president dictatorial powers, prohibiting religious political parties and authorising extreme powers of arrest and surveillance by the police, with a new anti-terrorism law.
When the Arab Spring began in Tunisa in December 2010, it was hardly a surprise that it spread to Egypt along with other countries including Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. It began on 25 January 2011 with massive demonstrations, marches, occupations of public squares, acts of non-violent civil disobedience and strikes, with millions of protesters demanding the resignation of Mubarak.
Tahrir Square became the centre of the revolution, with over 50,000 protesters occupying it on 25 January, and later growing to perhaps 300,000. The revolt continued there for 18 days until finally the military who had held the real power in Egypt at least since 1952 removed Mubarek from office on 11 February 2011.
In London on Saturday 5th February 2011 I photographed three protests related to the Egyptian Revolution. The first was a protest at the US Embassy where speakers from Stop the War, the British Muslim Initiative and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others castigated the USA for its support of the Mubarak government over the years and called for his immediate departure.
From there I went with the protesters to join others at the Egyptian Embassy in Mayfair, to join the Egyptians who had been protesting there all week.
While I was photographing at the Embassy I heard the noise of another protest a hundred yards or so down the street, where supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir had turned up in force. As usual most were dressed in black, but there was a group of men dressed in orange Guantanamo jump suits and wearing the masks of the corrupt rulers of Arab states.
Their rally was not in support of the current protests in Tahrir Square and elsewhere, but for a different Arab revolution, calling on the Egyptian army to remove Mubarek but in its place not to establish democracy and freedom, but to set up a Caliphate, theocratic rule rather like that in Iran.
You can read more about the London protests in the three links below to My London Diary where there are many more pictures. Sadly although Mubarek was removed, events in Egypt have not led to the increased freedoms the 2011 revolution was demanding. You can read more about the Arab Winter and the Egyptian Crisis that followed in various articles on Wikipedia and elsewhere online.
On Saturday 23rd November 2013 I photographed three protests in London.
Free Shaker Aamer March – Northcote Rd, Battersea
The march and rally in Battersea began close to the family home of Shaker Aamer, a British resident charity worker kidnapped in Afghanistan and sold to US troops. There was no evidence against him and he was first cleared for release from Guantanamo in 2007, but was still there and still being routinely tortured in 2013.
It was convenient for me, being just a short walk from Clapham Junction station, but too far from central London for most of the photographers who cover protests who largely stick to Zone 1 of the London Underground, so I felt my coverage of the event was particularly important in recording the event.
Aamer had gone from London with his family in June 2001 to work for a charity in Kabul. Four months later when Kabul was bombed he took his family out from the city for safety. Local bandits then seized a money making opportunity, kidnapping him and selling him to US forces on November 24, 2001.
He was then tortured by the US in Bagram and Kandahar, at times in the presence of British intelligence agents, before being illegally rendered to Guantanamo Bay in February 2002. Abuse and torture continued daily there and much of the time he was being kept in solitary confinement, subjected to particularly extreme treatment for continuing to protest his innocence and acting as a spokesperson for other prisoners, demanding his and their rights.
In 2013 despite never having been charged with any offence and twice being cleared for release Aamer remained a prisoner, the last British resident there. Many think he was still being held as the testimony he would give about his torture would be highly embarrassing to both US and UK intelligence agencies, and that the British government had been halfhearted in their public demands for his release, and in private urging the US to keep him locked away.
The campaign by the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign with years of protests outside Parliament and elsewhere had attracted considerable public support, including from his local Conservative MP and other MPs from all parties. There was a short rally outside the Baptist Church on Northcote Road before the marchers, many in orange Guantanamo-style jump suits and some with shackles and black hoods, began the short march through the busy shopping streets close to Clapham Junction to hold a longer rally at Battersea Arts Centre. I said goodbye and left them going up Lavender Hill to catch a train to my next event.
Remember Ricky Bishop – Jail his Killers -Brixton Police Station
Twelve years earlier on November 22, 2001, young black man Ricky Bishop was in a car being driven by a white friend in Brixton. Police stopped the car under suspicion as part of their area-wide anti-drug ‘Operation Clean Sweep’, searched Bishop on the spot and found nothing, but still handcuffed the two men and took them to Brixton Police Station. The white driver was not searched and was released without charge.
In the police station Bishop was taken into a small room and attacked by officers, though there was no CCTV evidence available of what went on. He went in a healthy 25-year-old fitness trainer. The beating caused him to have a heart attack, but the officers simply held him to the ground and only later called for a paramedic. Drugs were pushed into his mouth and stories invented to justify the arrest and assault. He was probably dead before an ambulance arrived and took him, still in handcuffs, to A&E at King College Hospital, standing around his dead body and making jokes. By the time his mother was informed of his detention he was dead.
Police issued a misleading press report and covered up what had happened, hiding evidence both immediately and at the inquest, where the jury were not allowed to come to a verdict that would assign any blame to the police. The Bishop family have accused 12 officers of murder, and their names were chanted at the protest around the ‘Remembrance Tree’ in front of the police station, each followed by a loud shout of ‘Murderer!’.
The arrest and subsequent treatment of the two men clearly reflected the racist nature of policing in Brixton, and the events following the death showed the failure of any real accountability of the police, with a criminal justice system that is complicit in letting police in this and many, many other cases literally get away with murder. Ricky Bishop’s death is one of several high-profile cases to have involved Brixton police over the years, in particular the death here of Sean Rigg in similar circumstances in August 2008.
There have been many marches and rallies in Brixton over these deaths in police custody, often at the tree in front of the police station, called the Remembrance Tree or the Lynching Tree by campaigners. There has been no sign that the police have taken real action to root out the systemic racism in the Metropolitan Police (and other forces.) The only action the police have taken is to remove all posters, candles, flowers and other signs of remembrance from the tree outside Brixton Police Station.
End Drone Attacks in Pakistan – Downing St to US Embassy
I arrived by Tube from Brixton too late for the start of the march by the PTI (Pakistan Movement for Justice party) from Downing Street to the US Embassy, then still in Grosvenor Square, but caught up with it as it went along Pall Mall, a few hundred yards from the start.
Around 500 supporters of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and a few from Stop The War and anti-drone groups were marching in protest against US drone strikes in Pakistan which have killed many innocent men, women and children.
It was I think the first march which the PTI had organised in London, and this showed, with the march sticking to the pavement and stopping at crossing lights.
London’s pavements are too busy for marches of this size and the march was soon broken up into a number of small groups by the lights, as those at the front carried on regardless of what was happening behind them. Some were carrying coffins, others posters and flags.
From Hyde Park Corner they went up Park Lane, which although always busy with traffic has wide pavements with few people on foot, and the march gathered together again, to make the final part of its journey to the embassy, walking past a camp with hunger strikers from the People’s Mojahedin of Iran to hold a rally in front of the embassy.
It was a noisy rally and the amplification for the speakers was not really enough for an outdoors event of this size. I listened to a couple of speeches then left for home.
NakNakba, NHS, Gitmo etc & Tamils – Saturday 18th May 2013 was another busy day for protests in London and I covered a number of demonstrations.
End Israeli Ethnic Cleansing – Old Palace Yard, Westminster
65 years after 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes as refugees in the ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe) when the state of Israel was created, Palestinians and their supporters protested outside parliament calling for an end to the continuing ethnic cleansing and a boycott and sanctions until Israel complies with international law.
There had been protests in Jerusalem earlier in the week on Nabka Day against the continuing sanctions against Palestinians that have crowded them into an ever-decreasing area of land, diminishing almost daily as new Israeli settlements are created and new restrictions placed on the movement of Palestinians. Many of those protesting in London from Jewish or Palestinian backgrounds and as usual these included a group of extreme orthodox Neturei Karta Jews who had walked down from North London; they see themselves as guardians of the true Jewish faith, and reject Zionism.
London Marches to Defend NHS – South Bank to Whitehall
On the opposite side of the River Thames thousands were gathering by the Royal Festival Hall to march against cuts, closures and privatisation of the NHS, alarmed at the attack by the government on the principles that underlie our National Health Service and the threats of closure of Accident and Emergency facilities, maternity units and hospital wards which seem certain to lead to our health system being unable to cope with demand – and many lives put at risk.
Nine years later we are seeing the effect of these policies with ambulance services unable to cope with demand, lengthy delays in treating people in A&E, delays in diagnosing cancers leading to increased deaths and more. And although it was only a matter of time before we had a pandemic like Covid, and exercises had shown what needed to be done to prepare for this, the NHS had not been given the resources to prepare for this, leading to much higher death rates than some comparable countries.
Part of the problems of the NHS come from disastrous PFI agreements pushed through under the Labour government, landing NHS trusts with huge debts that will continue for many years. This forced NHS trusts into disastrous hospital closure plans, some of which were defeated by huge public campaigns. Many of those marching were those involved in these campaigns at Lewisham, Ealing, Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Central Middlesex, Whittington and other hospitals around London.
Guantánamo Murder Scene – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
London Guantánamo Campaign staged a ‘murder scene’ at the US Embassy on the 101st day of the Guantánamo Hunger Strike in which over 100 of the 166 still held there are taking part, with many including Shaker Aamer now being forcibly fed.
More US Embassy Protests – US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
Other protesters outside the US Embassy included Narmeen Saleh Al Rubaye, born in the US and currently living in Birmingham, whose husband Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American citizen, was arrested in Iraq by American forces in 2004 and turned over to Iraqi custody in 2011. He was tortured by the Americans when they held him and was now being tortured by the Iraqis and also was on hunger strike. She has protested with her daughter Zeinab outside the US Embassy for a number of weekends and on this occasion was joined by a small group of Muslims who had come to protest against Guantanamo, appalled by the actions of the US waging a war against Islam and Muslims.
Shawki Ahmed Omar is still held in Iraq; before he died in 2021 former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark recorded a video calling for his release which was posted to YouTube in with the comment by another US lawyer “This case is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in recent United States history. It is a case where the US government essentially lied to the US Supreme Court to cover up torture and to be able to turn an American citizen over to people who they knew would torture him.”
A few yards away, kept separate by police, a group of supporters of the Syrian regime, including some from the minor Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) was also holding a protest in favour of the Assad regime and against western intervention in Syria.
Tamils protest Sri Lankan Genocide – Hyde Park to Waterloo Place
I met thousands of British Tamils and dignitaries and politicians from India, Sri Lanka and the UK as they marched through London on the 4th anniversary of the Mullivaikkal Massacre, many dressed in black in memory of the continuing genocide in Sri Lanka. Many wore the tiger emblem and called for a Tamil homeland – Tamil Eelam.
Although it was a large protest, with perhaps around 5,000 marchers I think it received absolutely no coverage in UK media, and I seemed to be the only non-Tamil photographer present. Tamils were rightly disgusted at the lack of response by the UK, the Commonwealth and the world to the organised genocide that took place in Sri Lanka, of which the massacre at Mullivaikkal four years ago was a climax.
The march had started from Hyde Park, and I caught up with it on Piccadilly and went with it taking photographs to Waterloo Place where there was to be a rally. But it had been a long day for me and I left just before this started.
