Posts Tagged ‘suicide’

Prisoners in Iraq, Ireland & Egypt & Atos Day of Action

Sunday, February 19th, 2023

Wednesday 19th February 2014 saw me travelling around London for protests calling for the release of political prisoners in Iraq, Ireland and Egypt before a protest at Atos’s offices led by DPAC.


Solidarity vigil for Shawki Ahmed Omar – Elvaston Place

Prisoners in Iraq, Ireland & Egypt & Atos Day of Action

The vigil outside the Iraqi consulate in Kensington was a small one, with only four people taking part while I was there, though a few more were expected later.

Prisoners in Iraq, Ireland & Egypt & Atos Day of Action

Shawki Ahmed Omar, an American citizen held and tortured in Iraq by US and Iraqis since his arrest in 2004, was then held in Abu Ghraib. Arrested by US soldiers while on a business trip he was held by the US in Iraq and tortured but never charged. Later in 2010 he was sentenced to 15 years in jail after a trial where he was unable to defend or even properly identify himself as the US had refused to hand him back his passport. When they left Iraq and handed him over to the Iraqis, who tortured him more.

His treatment has been described by former Attorney General of the United States Ramsey Clark as 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.

I had previously met Omar’s wife and daughter – who has never seen her father – on some of their series of protests outside the US Embassy. So far as I am aware he is now still in prison in Iraq.

Solidarity vigil for Shawki Ahmed Omar


Free Margaretta D’Arcy picket – Irish Embassy

Prisoners in Iraq, Ireland & Egypt & Atos Day of Action

My next stop was at the Irish Embassy, a short walk from Hyde Park Corner. It was the third picket there to demand the immediate release of Margaretta D’Arcy, imprisoned for protesting against illegal US flights from Shannon Airport, and now in Mountjoy Women’s Prison, Dublin.

D’Arcy, a long-term peace campaigner, member of the Committee of 100 and Greenham Common veteran and writer, actress, playwright and film director, was then 79 and suffering from cancer and arthritis. Two years earlier she had been arrested and imprisoned for lying down on the runway at Shannon in a peaceful direct action by members of Galway Alliance Against War. They were protesting the violation of Irish neutrality by US military flights using the airport.

Prisoners in Iraq, Ireland & Egypt & Atos Day of Action

She was again imprisoned in 2014 after she refused to sign a bond not to trespass again on the airport property in further protests against the US flights. She was released on 22nd March, but later imprisoned again and released in July 2014.

Free Margaretta D’Arcy picket


NUJ demands Egypt release jailed journalists – Egyptian Embassy

Prisoners in Iraq, Ireland & Egypt & Atos Day of Action

A few minutes walk took me into Mayfair and to a protest organised by my own union, the National Union of Journalists, calling for press freedom in Egypt and the release of all jailed journalists, including the four Al Jazeera journalists.

One of these had been in prison for 6 months, but the other three were arrested on 29th December 2013 and were among 20 journalists charged at the end of January with a string of offences including being a “member of a terrorist organization, disturbing public peace, instilling terror, harming the general interests of the country, possessing broadcast equipment without permit, possessing and disseminating images contrary to the truth.

The NUJ General Secretary Michelle Stanistreet and Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn took a letter up the steps to the main door of the embassy for a photograph but then had to walk to a less impressive neighbouring door to actually deliver it.

This was one of a number of protests organised by journalists in cities around the world. Some of those present had their mouths gagged with tape. The journalists were only finally released in 2015. Wikipedia has more on the case.

Reporters Without Borders now report “Egypt is one of the world’s biggest prisons for journalists. The hopes for freedom that sprang from the 2011 revolution now seem distant.” They say that 24 journalists are currently held there in jail.

NUJ demands Egypt release jailed journalists


Atos National Day of Action – Triton Square

Paula Peters of DPAC

Finally I made my way to Triton Square, just north of the Euston Road, close to Warren Street station.

Dennis Skinner MP speaking

A day of action there at the London HQ of Triton was a part of a day of action with protests at each of the 144 ATOS assessment centres around the country. The protesters called for the company to lose its contracts to carry out the tests and to be prosecuted for the way they had been handled, and for the resignation of the minister concerned, Iain Duncan Smith.

Among the many groups supporting the nationwide day of action were Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), Black Triangle, Atos Miracles, the Green Party, NUS, Occupy New Network, PCS and Unite.

The tests, based on tick boxes on a computer form had been widely discredited with a report commissioned by the government pointing out serious flaws. They fail to take account of the complex and differing natures of illnesses and their individual effects and are particularly poor with the assessment of mental illness.

Many of those found ‘fit to work’ have been obviously completely unable to do so – with over ten thousand in the last year for which figures were released dying within six weeks. The government reaction to the adverse publicity after these figures for 2011 were released was simply to stop issuing figures for later years. These numbers include some who committed suicide after being unfairly assessed by Atos.

The Atos administered tests take no account of proper medical evidence. The protesters call for the assessments to be made by qualified medical doctors, ideally by “the GP who regularly sees and treats the sick or disabled individual in question” who they say “is the only person able to decide if an individual is fit for work.”

At the end of the long protest, those remaining moved to the wider square in view of the Euston Road and released yellow balloons in memory of those who have taken their lives because of ATOS unfairly refused them support as Paula Peters of DPAC read a poem about the deaths.

Much more about the protest at Atos National Day of Action on My London Diary – and, as always, more pictures.


DPAC End Week of Protest Against Atos

Wednesday, August 31st, 2022

DPAC End Week of Protest Against Atos: In August 2012 Disabled People Against the Cuts and UK Uncut organised the week of action as a protest against the sick spectacle of Atos, the company who pressures its staff to unfairly declare disabled people ‘fit for work’ so as to increase its profits and meet government targets, bathing in the glory of sponsoring the Paralympic games. The week ended with two protests on Friday 31st August.


Closing Atos Ceremony – Triton Square

Protests earlier in the week had included a spoof Paralympic opening ceremony next to Tower Bridge, then decorated with a giant paralympic symbol hanging from its upper level, a vigil at Westminster and a memorial service outside the Atos head office to remember the people who have lost their lives at the hands of Atos Healthcare. There had been protests too in other cities – with 40 protesters as corpses in the road stopping traffic, and at the actual Paralympic opening many of the contestants covered up the Atos name on their lanyards as a protest against their involvement as sponsors.

Among those protesting earlier in the week was Tara Flood, a former Paralympian who represented GB at three Paralympic games and whose gold-medal winning time at the 1992 Barcelona games remains a world record. She reflected the feeling of many disabled people when she stated: “It is a shocking irony that Atos is a main sponsor of London 2012 whilst destroying disabled people’s lives on behalf of the government.”

Over 500 came to Atos’s offices in Triton Square for a peaceful protest at the end of the week on Friday 31st August 2012. It had a festival atmosphere, with music and dancing, poppers, brightly coloured plastic water pistols and some fancy dress along the the usual banners and placards, but there was no mistaking the anger against Atos, evident in the slogans on the placards and chants of ‘Atos Kills!’

The target-driven computer-based work capability assessments delivered by Atos cause extreme hardship and misery to many disabled – and death to some. Last year 1,100 claimants died after Atos tests placed them on compulsory work-related activity to gain benefits, and others found ‘fit for work’ and so left without income have committed or attempted suicide.

Among conditions that Atos tests have found to have no bearing on fitness for work have been fatal heart conditions, terminal breast and kidney cancer and severe MS.

In one long street theatre performance disabled people who truly wanted to be freed of their disabilities were urged by ‘Atos’s own Reverend’ to come forward and go through the ‘Atos Miracle Cure’ archway, and several, mainly in wheelchairs, did so. Nothing seemed to happen to them, and they were disappointed, even after the ‘Rev’ had blessed them and patted them on the head, but then an ‘Atos doctor’ in a white coat came to assess them, and lo! she gave them each a certificate that they were now fit to work, and, even more miraculous, a job. But it was all a con!

By the time the ceremony ended I had left and was making my way to the Department of Work and Pensions offices, Caxton House, in Westminster, having been tipped off that disabled activists had entered and occupied them.

More at Closing Atos Ceremony.


DPAC Occupy Dept of Work & Pensions – Westminster

Traffic was heavy in London – I should have taken the tube. By the time I arrived there were around 20 or so protesters outside with banners in front of the entrance. Behind them were a block of around a dozen police in several rows in the fairly narrow outer lobby, and behind them I could see more police and a few protesters.

Shortly after me more arrived from the event outside the Atos offices, including quite a few in wheelchairs and formed a fairly large crowd, spilling out into the street.

Adam Lotun and spoke briefly about the reasons for the week of actions against Atos and announcing the struggle would continue and as a part of that he would be standing in the Corby by-election.

A few late arrivals tried to push past the police to join those already in the building, but as well as police there were people in wheelchairs and the media in their way and they had little chance of success. The situation became rather confused, but soon police reinforcements arrived and pushed the crowd back a few yards away from the doorway.


Suicide Crisis

Thursday, February 13th, 2020

I hadn’t realised until I went to this event the terrible scale of the suicide crisis this country is now facing. It isn’t something that is entirely evenly distributed and I have to think for a long time to recall someone I know personally who has actually killed themselves. But while talking to a friend a few months ago she told me that over 20 people she had know had taken their own lives, all disabled people in desperate circumstances because of cuts in benefits, either because of unfair assessements or following benefit sanctions.

I had a shock a few weeks ago, waiting for a train at a busy London station, standing on the platform when something had clearly gone wrong, with railway staff running down the neighbouring platform to stop an incoming train. I glanced back down the track and quickly turned away as some distance away there was clearly a body and a great deal of blood on the line. My train was just coming in and I got on and left without knowing what had happened, but several times a year the trains on my own line are halted because someone has jumped in front of a train at another station.

The last person I knew who did so was a photographer, Bob Carlos Clarke, who in 2006 walked out of the Priory Hospital in Barnes and threw himself in front of a train at a nearby level crossing. A year or two earlier I’d had some long telephone conversations with him about his book ‘Shooting Sex: The Definitive Guide to Undressing Beautiful Strangers’ and he had sent me a CD-Rom with some of his pictures, though I don’t think I ever got round to writing more than a short note about it – it wasn’t my sort of photography.

I’d come across suicide – or rather attempted suicide – at a much closer distance in my teenage years when I’d actually interupted someone who was trying to electrocute themselves, pulling away one of the mains wires they had wrapped around a finger and had burnt into their flesh. It was an event that seared itself into my mind too.

What shocks me now are the statistics on teenage suicides, with UK official figures showing more than 200 school age children now kill themselves each year. The campaigners were laying out 200 pairs of shoes to represent these 200 fatalities, 200 lives ended. One of the main factors that lead to this is the failure of mental health services, which simply lack the resources to deal eefectively with the problem, particularly with the problems of young people. Speakers told some horrific stories of teenagers waiting for months to get the specialist care they desperately need or at being let down by what care is provided.

A number of MPs and others had pledged support and some were shown on posters with their promises in writing, GPs and psychatrists came to speak, along with both the Shadow Minister for Mental Health & Social Care Barbara Keeley and Shadow Secretary of State for Health Jon Ashworth came and pledged a Labour government to action. But unfortunately we haven’t got a Labour government.

More at: Stop the suicide crisis.


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