Posts Tagged ‘refugee rights’

Refugee Rights & Stop Trident – 2016

Tuesday, February 27th, 2024

Refugee Rights & Stop Trident – On Saturday 27th February 2016 I photographed two large protest marches in London. The first was part of a protest across Europe calling for safe passage for refuges and the second was against government plans to replace the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons which recently for a second time failed a test launch in 2023.

European March for Refugee Rights – Hyde Park

Refugee Rights & Stop Trident

Several hundred protesters, including many who had been to aid refugees in Lesvos and at the Calais camps and some who had volunteered in Syria with Medicins Sans Frontiers, marched from Hyde Park Corner to a rally at Speakers Corner before going on to Trafalgar Square as part of a day of protest in cities across Europe calling for safe and secure routes for all refugees and asylum seekers seeking protection in Europe.

Refugee Rights & Stop Trident

They want an end to the deaths in sea crossings and other borders and for refugees to be allowed to keep their possessions and be reunited with their families.

Refugee Rights & Stop Trident

Groups supporting the protest included the Syria Solidarity Campaign, Solidarity with Refugees, London2Calais, Migrants’ Rights Network, SOAS Solidarity with Refugees & Displaced People Soc, Wonder Foundation, Calais Action, UK Action for Refugees, Refugee Aid Initiative, No Borders and the Greece Solidarity Campaign.

Refugee Rights & Stop Trident

A woman who had volunteered at Lesvos came a child’s life-jacket worn on the dangerous sea crossing to there, more suitable for a beach holiday; others wore similar life-jackets on the march which have become a symbol for the refugees and those who drown on the journey from Turkey to Lesvos. Refugee support groups from Brighton brought a splendid banner they had made based on Picasso’s Spanish Civil War painting ‘Guernica‘.

I marched with them through Hyde Park to Speakers Corner where there was a short rally before they marched on to Trafalgar Square in front of the CND Stop Trident march which was then beginning to march from Marble Arch.

Some then decided to join the CND march but others decided to march in front of it. CND stewards at first tried to stop them but then halted the Stop Trident march for around ten minutes to leave a gap between the two marches which were following the same route.

More at European March for Refugee Rights.

Stop Trident March – Marble Arch to Trafalgar Square

Around sixty thousand had come to Marble Arch to join the march to a rally in Trafalgar Square against government plans to replace the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons at a cost of £180 billion or more.

CND say Trident is immoral and using it would cause catastrophic global damage. These weapons of mass destruction don’t keep us safe and divert resources from essential spending on services like the NHS, schools and housing.

In 2024 CND estimates that the total cost of building and maintaining Trident has been £205 billion. The UK has hung on to nuclear weapons largely as a matter of prestige and to justify its position on the UN Security Council and it has never been an important deterrent – and the recent test failures make it even less of a credible threat to other countries.

I arrived late for the official photocall before the start of the march on Park Lane because the crowd of marchers was so dense and we were soon moved well away from the front banner and those holding it by stewards in the usual somewhat unfriendly ‘Stop the War’ manner.

At the southern end of Park Lane the march halted for around ten minutes to make a gap between it and the marchers for Refugee Rights who had come to join them. I went to take a few pictures of this march and then returned to the ‘Stop Trident’ march.

After taking some pictures of the marchers, working my way through the crowds I had to leave and take the tube from Green Park to Charing Cross for the start of the rally, meeting the head of the march as it arrived at Trafalgar Square.

It was a long rally with a long list of distinguished speakers including Nicola Sturgeon, Caroline Lucas, Leanne Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Bruce Kent, Christine Blower, Mark Serwotka, Tariq Ali and many more including some younger activists, and you can see photographs of most of those who spoke. They all opposed the renewal of Trident which they dismissed as out of date, totally irrelevant to our defence and a complete waste of money which could be put to so much better use providing proper jobs and services.

The rally went on longer than expected as we were waiting for the final address by Jeremy Corbyn who was travelling down from Sheffield where he had been speaking at a conference. He arrived on the platform to an enormous round of cheering and applause and gave a rousing speech ending the protest on a high note.

Many more photographs of the march and rally on My London Diary:
Stop Trident Rally
Stop Trident March

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Refugees, Sharia and Islamophobia

Tuesday, June 20th, 2023

Refugees, Sharia and Islamophobia: In 2000 the UN June General Assembly declared that June 20th every year is World Refugee Day on which, as the UNHCR web site puts it, ‘the world celebrates the strength and courage of people who have been forced to flee their home country to escape conflict or persecution. The 2023 theme of World Refugee Day is “hope away from home.”’

Back in 2010 it was celebrated with parades including one in London. Also on Sunday 20th June there was a rally by One Law For All calling for an end to Sharia and other religious laws, opposed by a small group of Islamic extremists, who were opposed by Islamophobic EDL supporters, in turn opposed by largely Asian East Londoners.

Umbrella Parade for Refugees – Whitehall to Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park.

Refugees, Sharia and Islamophobia

The London Umbrella Parade for refugees was organised by a partnership of groups including Amnesty International, British Red Cross, Oxfam, Refugee Action and Student Action for Refugees working with ECRE, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Refugees, Sharia and Islamophobia

The umbrella was “a symbol of care and shelter, representing our proud tradition of offering safety to those in need of international protection,” a tradition that was then clearly under threat from the UK Borders Agency, with forced deportation flights in which refugees are returned to an uncertain future in Iraq, with beatings on the flight and on arrival.

Refugees, Sharia and Islamophobia

Since then we have seen successive Home Secretaries racheting up increasingly racist anti-refugee policies, now clearly and deliberately flouting international laws. The UK once had proud tradition and well-deserved reputation for upholding human rights, playing a leading role in establishing these human rights laws it is now breaking.

Refugees, Sharia and Islamophobia

IN 2010 I wrote “Competition between the political parties to be even tougher on immigration and appease the right-wing press have serious eroded the chances of refugees and asylum seekers receiving humane treatment and proper consideration in the UK.” Things have travelled much further only this inhumane path since then.

I walked with the campaigners from the Defence Ministry in Horseguards Avenue down Whitehall, past the Houses of Parliament and across Westminster Bridge. The march ended with a picnic in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park outside the Imperial War Museum. The start and finishing places were chosen appropriately as most refugees and asylum seekers are a result of war.

More pictures at Umbrella Parade for Refugees.

No Sharia – One Law For All – Whitehall

Maryam Namazie speaking opposite Downing St

One Law for All campaigns against Sharia and religious arbitration in the UK, Iran and across the globe. They say these religious laws are discriminatory against and promote violence against women and have no place in the 21st century.

They want to end “religious laws and theocracy and promote secularism and the separation of religion from the state, education, law and public policy as a minimum precondition for the respect of human, women and LGBT rights.”

They have have campaigned for an end to Islamic regimes in Iran and Afghanistan, and have recently been involved in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in London and elsewhere, promoting the Woman, Life, Freedom Charter.

Their rally opposite Downing St on 20th June 2010 came on the anniversary of the the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan in Iran, and after the rally the several hundred taking part marched to the Iranian Embassy in Kensington.

A short distance away were a group of mainly young Muslim men dressed in black and holding posters and flags. The called themselves ‘Muslims Against the Crusades’ or ‘Muslims Against Crusaders’ widely thought to be a reincarnation of the banned ‘Islam4UK’ (itself a relaunch of the banned Al-Muhajiroun.) One of their banners proclaimed ‘Sharia Will Dominate The World’.

In my 2010 account I quote from Maryam Namazie of One Law for all, writing on the Iran Solidarity blog:

“The battle against Sharia law is a battle against Islamism not Muslims, immigrants and people living under Sharia law here or elsewhere. So it is very apt for the Islamists to hold a counter-demonstration against our rally. This is where the real battleground lies. Anyone wanting to defend universal rights, secularism and a life worthy of the 21st century must join us now in order to push back the Islamists as well as fringe far Right groups like the English Defence League and the British National Party that aims to scapegoat and blame many of our citizens for Islamism.”

My London Diary

During the rally police escorted a small group of EDL supporters along Whitehall to opposite the Muslim protesters where they shouted insults and threat at both them and the photographers who went to take their pictures. After a few minutes they were led away to a penned protest area further south of the One Law For All rally.

A second much larger group were then brought down Whitehall, much more carefully surrounded by police, making them hard to photograph. Some carried Unite Against Fascism placards and most of the several hundred were young British Asians. Earlier the UAF and United East End had marched frpm Stepney Green to a rally at Whitechapel against the EDL and this group had marched to confront them in Westminster. But by the time they arrived the One Law for All rally had ended and the Muslims Against the Crusades had left.

After some minutes photographing the young Asians, including one man being rather forcefully arrested, mainly having to work over the heads or between their police escorts, I rushed after the One Law For All marchers to take more pictures.

I didn’t make it to the Iranian embassy. By the time the march was passing Victoria Station I decided I was tired and had taken enough pictures and got on a train to begin my journey home.

I wrote about this and posted pictures of the One Law for All campaigners at No Sharia – One Law For All but separated out the photographs of the other protesters into posts at Muslim Crusaders For Sharia, EDL Oppose Muslims Against Crusades amd UAF Arrive to Oppose EDL


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Migrant Rights & Anti-Racist Pride 2016

Saturday, June 25th, 2022

Migrant Rights & Anti-Racist Pride 2016: Movement for Justice organised a Migrant Rights & Anti-Racist Pride march to the official Pride London procession and joined the main procession at the extreme end along with other protest groups who were relegated to the rear of the long parade.

Many feel the the official Pride event has been taken over by corporate sponsors such as Barclays and BAE systems and is a parade rather than a protest, no longer representing its roots and that the organisers deliberately marginalise any political groups.

At 12.15 they began their march on Oxford St, going along with others including London in Solidarity with Istanbul LGBTI Pride protesting the banning of Istanbul Pride, Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants.

They walked along to Regent Street, turning north and going up towards Portland Place were the main Pride march was gathering and I went with them, stopping to photograph others on the way.

As usual there were some rather strange costumes worn by some of those taking part, and I photographed some of these, but avoided the more corporate aspects of the event.

There were sections of the march that were still very recognisably protests, and some were marching with banners and placards which could have been on any protest against racism, homophobia and standing up for the rights of refugees.

Gay Muslims on the march with the messages ‘I exist for the expansion of your mind’ and’Halal Babe’.

Stonewall as ever where there to protest, with a range of red t-shirts, some with the message ‘Some People are BI’ or GAY or TRANS, but all ‘Get Over It!’

I took a lot of pictures as usual, and there are over a hundred on them on My London Diary, though the selection I made concentrates on those taking part in Pride as a protest, and perhaps misses some of the more outré images.

I didn’t bother to photograph the actual march but was still photographing the groups at the back who had not moved well over an hour before the parade began. By the time they got on the route many of the spectators will have given up watching and have left for drinks or food.

Pride London 2016
Migrant Rights & Anti-Racist Pride

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For Refugee Rights and Against Trident

Sunday, February 27th, 2022

For Refugee Rights and Against Trident. I covered two marches in London on 27th February 2016, the first calling for safe passage for refugees seeking protection in Europe and following this a much larger march against government plans to waste £180 billion or more on replacing the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons.

European March for Refugee Rights

The European March for Refugee Rights was part of a day of protests in cities across Europe demanding action by governments to provide secure safe passage routes for all refugees and asylum seekers seeking protection in Europe. They want an end to deaths at borders and drownings and for refugees to be allowed to keep their possessions and be reunited with their families.

Among those taking part were people who had been to aid refugees in Lesvos and at the Calais camps and others who had volunteered with Medicins Sans Frontiers in Syria. The protest was supported by many groups including the Syria Solidarity Campaign, Solidarity with Refugees, London2Calais, Migrants’ Rights Network, SOAS Solidarity with Refugees & Displaced People Soc, Wonder Foundation, Calais Action, UK Action for Refugees, Refugee Aid Initiative, No Borders and the Greece Solidarity Campaign.

This was a short march taking place unusually inside Hyde Park, gathering at Hyde Park Corner and walking up to Speakers Corner where there was a rally. This made it possible for those taking part to join the Stop Trident Rally which was starting from Marble Arch, and going down Park Lane on its way to Trafalgar Square. Some of the marchers decided to form a block to march in front of the main Stop Trident banner and march on to Trafalgar Square.

Stop Trident march stewards tried briefly to stop them but then gave up and halted their march for around ten minutes to create a gap between the two groups.

European March for Refugee Rights

Stop Trident March

According to CND there were 60,000 people marching from Marble Arch to a mass rally in Trafalgar Square, and although their estimate may have been a little on the high side, this was definitely a very large protest, starting with a densely packed crowd on Park Lane. When the rally began in Trafalgar Square the tail of the march was still around half a mile away, and I think many gave up before reaching the rally as the streets leading to it became blocked.

Few people outside the military and arms manufacturers – probably the most powerful of all lobbies in the country can really believe the expenditure of £180 billion or more on replacing the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons is either necessary or cost-effective. The huge majority of nations in the world have no nuclear capability, and by December 2021, 59 states had ratified or acceded to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which entered into force on 22 January 2021.

Lindsey German, Stop the War, Kate Hudson, CND General Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, SNP First Minister, Scotland and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas hold the Stop Trident banner

A national survey by Survation at the start of 2021 for CND showed 59% of the public supported the UK government signing up to the TPNW, including 50% of Conservative voters and 68% of Labour voters. An even higher 77% supported a ‘total ban on all nuclear weapons globally’ with majority support from young and old, in all regions of the country, from Conservative as well as Labour voters, leavers and remainers. The government remains resolutely opposed to the treaty.

This widespread opposition to nuclear weapons isn’t largely a matter of their cost but on both moral and pragmatic grounds. As CND say, using nuclear weapons would cause catastrophic global damage; these weapons of mass destruction don’t keep us safe and divert resources from essential spending on services like the NHS, schools and housing and “it is clearer than ever that real security for Britain requires addressing the risks posed by the climate emergency and pandemics on a global scale.“

Stop Trident March

Stop Trident Rally

Trafalgar square was unusually packed for the long rally that followed the march, with people listening and applauding a long list of speakers, including Nicola Sturgeon, Caroline Lucas, Leanne Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Bruce Kent, Christine Blower, Mark Serwotka and Tariq Ali, as well as many less well-known names. There were many marchers who found it impossible to get into the square.

Nicola Sturgeon First Minister Scotland

All the speakers opposed the spending of an estimated £180 billion or more on renewal of Trident which they dismissed as out of date, totally irrelevant to our defence and a complete waste of money which could be put to so much better use providing proper jobs and services.

It was a long wait, around two hours standing in the cold for the final speech by Jeremy Corbyn who had earlier in the day been speaking in Sheffield and whose train had been a little delayed. He was greeted by a tremendous response from the crowd, and gave a rousing speech to end the protest on a high note. Despite the dismissive remarks from many political commentators on the media, Corbyn is one of the most powerful political speakers of current years.

Stop Trident Rally

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Stop Trident, Save Refugees…

Saturday, February 27th, 2021

Last Tuesday I watched John Pilger’s 2010 film, The War You Don’t See, a film that takes an honest look at wars and the failure of most journalists to report honestly on them – and how those that do find their work fails to get broadcast or printed. It’s an at times harrowing view of war and lays open the whole huge PR web of lies that is used to persuade the public that they are necessary and to support them, based mainly around the propaganda over Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is now a matter of official record that all of the reasons put forward at the time for the invasion of Iraq, notably in the UK by Prime Minister Tony Blair were lies; but not only that, were known at the time to be false. It was simply a war for the control of Iraqi oil, and to keep the military industry growing. Of course many of us outside the
CIA and other agencies also knew that at the time, including the over a million who went to protest in London.

Pilger managed to get interviews with a wide range of people, including journalists and others who admit that they failed for various reasons to inform the public what was really going on. Those from other news sources, including the BBC, make a wholly unconvincing attempt to justify the approach they took, visibly squirming as Pilger asks his questions, trying to defend their toeing the government line rather than examining the evidence and reporting objectively.

We are in an age of perpetual war, not largely because of real disputes that could not be solved by other means, but manufactured and promoted by a huge web of deceptions to feed what is sometimes called the military-industrial complex, a term coined by Eisenhower for his final public speech in 1961 when he warned of the “economic, political, even spiritual” dangers of “the disastrous rise of misplaced power” it it could – and has – produced.

Pilger’s film deals briefly with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which it is now clear served no military purpose as the war with Japan was rapidly drawing to a close when they were dropped. The film includes an interview he made in the 1980s with Australian journalist Wilfred Graham Burchett who managed to evade the military security that kept almost all journalists simply taking down and passing on the military briefings which denied the existence of radiation sickness and went to Hiroshima and reported on the terrible effects of the bomb.

Despite censorship and other attempts to stop his report reaching the outside world, the first 200 words of his 3,000 word report reached the Daily Express who put it on the front page – and the world learnt of how 30 days after the bombing apparently uninjured people were still “dying, mysteriously and horribly” from what Burchett described as “the atomic plague.”

Journalists who step out from the official line can expect to suffer, and many. particularly those who refuse to be led and “embedded” have been killed reporting on wars. Others, such as Julian Assange find themselves the subject of deliberate campaigns to harass and discredit them – and in his case to imprison him in solitary confinement – possibly to be extradited to life in solitary in the USA – despite an extradition treaty that excludes those accused of political crimes.

Our so-called Independent Nuclear Deterrent is wholly a programme to feed that military-industrial complex, with its chilling threat hanging over us all, something that at least one US president has been prepared to consider using and which only the willingness of one Russian soldier to disobey orders saved us from its accidental unleashing.

On Saturday 27th February, around 60,000 came to Marble Arch to march from there to a rally in Trafalgar Square against government plans to replace the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons at a cost of £180 billion or more. They said Trident is immoral and using it would cause catastrophic global damage; these weapons of mass destruction don’t keep us safe and divert resources from essential spending on services like the NHS, schools and housing.

I was a little late to the official photocall because of the dense crowds as I made may way from the European March for Refugee Rights which had finished with a rally a short distance away in Hyde Park. This was taking place in various cities across Europe and demanding that governments take action now to open secure safe passage routes for all refugees and asylum seekers seeking protection in Europe. They called for an end to deaths at borders and for refugees to be allowed to keep their possessions and be reunited with their families.

At the end of this march, many of those taking part went to join the Stop Trident march, some forming up as a group ahead of the official front of the march despite attempts by the Stop the War stewards to move them. Eventually the stewards halted the main march for around ten minutes to create a gap between the two groups.

Stop Trident Rally
Stop Trident March
European March for Refugee Rights

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

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