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Global Human Rights Torch Relay: Thursday 25th October 2007 I photographed this rally in Trafalgar Square and the torchlit march which followed to a protest at the Chinese Embassy.

The 2008 Summer Olympics was to be held in Beijing, China from 8th to 24th August 2008 and the official Summer Olympics Torch Relay – which had been a feature of the Olympics since the 1936 Berlin games – was announced in April 2007, though it was to take place from March 24 until August 8, 2008. This travelled the world in a very roundabout 129-day route from Athens to Beijing and was met with protests in many cities including San Francisco, London and Paris.

The Coalition to Investigate Persecution of the Falun Gong in China (CIPFG) organised a series of torch relays in cities around the world beginning in April 2007 to raise awareness about human rights violations, particularly in China and countries surrounding area and in particular the persecution of crimes including torture and the harvesting of human organs of Falun Gong practitioners.

The policing of the event and the intervention of Westminster Council officials showed that there was huge political pressure in London against protests against China and against the Olympics as London was preparing for the 2012 Olympics here. We saw it again when the official torch relay came to London in April 2008.

Here I’ll post – with minor corrections – my account of the event from 2007 with a few of the pictures – many more on My London Diary.

Global Human Rights Torch Relay – 2007

Trafalgar Square to Chinese Embassy

Thursday was a miserable day, with persistent drizzle or light rain, and Trafalgar Square was clogged up with some computer games fair, so that there was little space left for the Global Human Rights Torch Relay on the North Terrace. Organised by the ‘Coalition To Investigate The Persecution Of The Falun Gong‘ this also highlighted other human rights abuses in China, as well as some in countries within the Chinese sphere of influence, notably Burma (Myanmar.)

This relay had started in Athens in August, with events in several European countries, and it is going on to Australia and North and South America before ending in Asia next year.

The relay points out that the these human rights abuses are at odds with the ideals of the Olympic Movement and calls for the Beijing Games to be moved to one of the previous Olympic venues unless there are dramatic improvements in human rights in China. Among the speakers were a couple of Lords and several ex-Olympic competitors.

Westminster Council officials arrived after an hour or so and tried to stop the event, which thanks to the gaming festival, was indeed blocking the pavement. They made the protestors form a narrow line against the back wall. Then they and the police ruled out the use of the sound system, declaring it was a hazard in the wet conditions. Speakers had to make use of a battery operated megaphone.

Despite this harassment, the protest continued, with a ‘Greek Goddess’ bringing the flame to light the torches of figures representing England, Scotland , Wales and Ireland, and perhaps a couple of hundred marched through the West End to the Chinese Embassy for a candle-lit protest.

Here photographers met with deliberate antagonism from the police. Officers are standing in a line around 2 metres into the road in front of the protest. The area between the police and the demonstration is completely clear, absolutely safe, and it is where we need to be to take pictures or film the protest. Much to our disgust, we are ordered out when we attempt to get on with our work.

Many more pictures on My London Diary at global human rights torch relay.

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End Austerity, No to Racism, Tories Out! The main event I covered on Saturday 16th July was a march and rally organised by the the People’s Assembly and Stand Up To Racism as an emergency demonstration after the Brexit referendum result a few weeks earlier. But I also photographed three other events, two on the edges of this and the first totally unrelated.

Falun Dafa march against Chinese repression – Regent St

I hadn’t been aware that practitioners of Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong), an advanced Buddhist practice of moral rectitude, meditation and exercise founded by Mr Li Hongzhi in 1992, were to be marching through London to protest the continuing torture and repression they have experience in China since 1999, and simply came across them as I walked up Regent Street towards the BBC where the People’s Assembly march was gathering.

I think I had first photographed Falun Gong when they took part in the Westminster New http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2004/01/jan.htm Year’s Day Parade back in 2004 but I had taken pictures of them quite a few times since then, both at major events and the regular protests that they hold. They have maintained a small permanent 24 hour protest opposite the Chinese Embassy in Portland Place for many years.

In China, Falun Dafa have been subjected to forced labour, psychiatric abuse, torture and even execution to supply human organs for Chinese transplant operations since they were targeted in an antireligious campaign by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999. In earlier years the party had encouraged the movement and the spiritual practices from which Falung Dafa emerged as an extremist form. While Falun Dafa is a cult with some beliefs that endanger its adherents and many would find abhorrent this in no way justifies their criminal persecution in China.

Falun Dafa march against Chinese repression

End Austerity, No to Racism, Tories Out! – BBC, Regent St

The People’s Assembly and Stand Up To Racism march had chosen to start outside the BBC, as I wrote “in the forlorn hope that they might for once cover a protest in Britain properly. Many marching and at the rally showed great support for Jeremy Corbyn as our next prime minister – and the only hope of a future for the Labour Party.” Unfortunately that was not to be – and we are suffering now.

Many of those urging the public to vote to leave Europe in the months leading up to the referendum had represented this as a way we could control immigration to this country, and had deliberately stirred up racist fears. The result had been an increase in racist and other hate attacks, particularly directed against refugees and asylum seekers. Many were on the march to support the human and civil rights and show solidarity with refugees and asylum seekers against the upsurge in racism and hate attacks.

The Home Office’s ‘hostile environment’ policy, first announced in 2012 by then Home Secretary Theresa May was cited, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Office_hostile_environment_policy Wikipedia, “as one of the harshest immigration policies in the history of the United Kingdom, and has been widely criticised as inhumane, ineffective, and unlawful” with the UN Human Rights Council finding it fostered xenophobia and the Equality and Human Rights Commission finding it broke equalities law – and of course it led to the Windrush scandal.

I took pictures of the people preparing to march and walked with it a short distance down Regent Street before leaving to cover two other events before returning to the rally at the end of the march.

End Austerity, No to Racism, Tories Out!

Cleaners Flash Mob at CBRE London HQ – Marylebone

One of the groups taking part in the march were United Voices of the World supporters including some of those taking part in the long strike – then on its 38th day – at 100 Wood Street in the City of London.

They had told me they were going to leave the march for a short ‘flash mob’ at the headquarters of the CBRE who run 100 Wood Street which was around a quarter of a mile from the march route.

I’d stayed behind for a few minutes photographing the marchers before I left to run after them. When I arrived they had already gone into t he office foyer and were protesting inside, but the doors had been locked. I took a few pictures through the large glass doors but was then able to get inside for a minute or two as some started to leave. After taking a few pictures of the group in front of the offices I ran off to find a small protest by the EDL which had been organised to oppose the day’s big march with a rally in Hyde Park.

Cleaners Flash Mob at CBRE London HQ

EDL march and rally – Hyde Park

Few EDL members had turned up for the event, well under a hundred, but they were easy to find as there were several times as many police who had turned up to prevent any trouble between them and anti-fascists and were marching as a loose cordon around them down Park Lane.

A few anti-fascist had come to oppose them, but most had left to join the main march after seeing how few of the EDL had turned up. Police escorted the EDL into the park, where they had set up a pen for their protest, but they refused to march into it. After some heated arguments with police the the EDL stewards calmed down the others and they agreed to hold their rally in front of the pen instead of in it.

There was a small incident when a woman walked past on the opposite side of the protest to me and shouted ‘Black Lives Matter’; stewards rushed towards her and manhandled her rather roughly away while a large group of police stood by watching but failed to intervene.

EDL march and rally

Peoples Assembly/Stand Up to Racism rally – Parliament Square

I took the tube to Westminster and joined the crowd relaxing after the march in a sunny Parliament Square. Whereas the Hyde Park rally had been full of bitterness and hate, here the mood was much warmer and positive, though there was considerable anger expressed against government policies by the many speakers.

*Zita Holbourne of BARAC and PCS holds up her ‘We Stand with Jeremy Corbyn’ poster*

But while I’d been kept out out the small crowd in Hyde Park by police and stewards, here I was free to walk around and people were happy to be photographed. It was a totally different atmosphere.

I didn’t photograph every speaker, but you can see I think thirteen of them in my pictures from the event, as well as many pictures of the others standing or sitting on the grass to listen to them. Perhaps the most interesting was an asylum seeker, brought to the microphone by Antonia Bright from Movement for Justice, who spoke briefly about her experiences in our racist asylum system.

Peoples Assembly/Stand Up to Racism rally