Obama, UoL, Ethiopia, Israel & Ukraine – One other disparate set of protests ten years in the past on Friday twenty third Might 2014 had me dashing round London to doc them.
Obama hold your guarantees – Trafalgar Sq.
My working day started in Trafalgar Sq. the place the London Guantánamo Marketing campaign and others had come as part of a world day of motion coordinated by the US organisation Witness Towards Torture, with protests in 40 cities in three continents calling on President Obama to make good the promise he had once more made a 12 months earlier to shut Guantánamo.
The campaigners many wearing black hoods and orange jumpsuits stood in a protracted line on the North Terrace holding posters. Some had introduced an enormous inflatable determine of Shaker Aamer, a London resident, nonetheless there, held with out cost for 12 years regardless of having twice been cleared for launch.
As spokesperson for he London Guantánamo Marketing campaign Aisha Maniar acknowledged:
“In over 5 years as US president, Barack Obama has did not ship a change we will consider in on Guantánamo Bay. Twelve years of indefinite detention nearly wholly with out cost or trial for 154 prisoners has made the world an infinitely extra insecure, harmful, and lawless place… Obama’s phrases stay purely rhetorical. There may be little intention to shut Guantánamo Bay and the authorized black gap it has created.”
Defend College of London Backyard Halls employees – Senate Home
At 1pm I used to be Senate Home with members of the Unbiased Staff of Nice Britain, the grass roots commerce union to which many low paid employees on the College belong, in addition to supporters from the Joint Store Stewards Community and college college students and employees. Each the UoL and the contractors Cofely and Aramark who they’ve outsourced the employees to refuse to recognise the IWGB, preferring the extra compliant conventional unions. However many of the cleaners and others had left these after discovering they had been unwilling to face as much as the employers on their behalf and joined the IWGB.
London College introduced the closure of three of its Central London halls of residence – the Backyard Halls – with out session with the IWGB and meant to make over 80 employees redundant on the finish of June.
The IWGB had requested supporters to ship letters to London College Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Adrian Smith itemizing their calls for that there must be no obligatory redunddancies and the the size of service of the employees be revered, in addition to calling for significant session withe the IWGB and that employees transferred to different contracts ought to retain their pay, phrases and circumstances. They acknowledged “the College bears duty for the remedy of those employees, no matter the truth that their roles are contracted to non-public firms.”
Round 30 protesters had been outdoors the primary entrance to Senate Home once I arrived and had been drumming a really noisy demonstration whereas handing out leaflets and displaying banners.
Quickly after they had been joined by IWGB organiser Alberto Durango they left to stroll across the outdoors of the constructing. Safety had rushed to shut the door on Montague Place however when the protesters reached Russell Sq. the doorways to Stewart Home, a part of the College property joined to Senate Home they discovered an open door and round half of them walked in to protest noisily contained in the constructing for a couple of minutes, nonetheless beating their drums earlier than discovering one other exit into the Senate Home automobile park.
Right here the protest got here to to an finish with the IWGB’s standard message, ‘We’ll be again!’. The IWGB was balloting its members for strikes towards each Cofely and Aramark.
Extra at Defend UoL Backyard Halls employees.
Oromo and Ogaden towards Ethiopian killings
I rushed to Parliament to satisfy Ethiopians protesting outdoors Parliament over the Ethiopian authorities’s killing of Oromo college college students peacefully protesting the grabbing of Oromo land. The protest was coming to an finish as I arrived however I used to be in a position to shortly take a number of photos
The protest was by supporters of the Oromo and Ogaden Nationwide Liberation Fronts based shortly earlier than the autumn of Emperor Haile Selassie. Since then the army authorities, the Derg regime and the brand new Ethiopian state has continued the suppression of the Oromo, and initiated mass resettlements from Northern Ethiopia onto Oromo lands and moved tens of millions of Oromo into camps run by the army.
The USA was discovered by BBC Newsnight and and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism uncovered in 2011 to have labored with the the Ethiopian authorities in an alliance “utilizing billions of {dollars} of improvement assist as a software for political oppression” with programmes of deliberate hunger of communities, and “of mass detentions, (and) the widespread use of torture and extra-judicial killings” towards what they describe as terrorism.
In early Might there had been mass killing by the authourites of Oroam College college students and civiliams protesting peacefully towards unlawful forcible evictions of Oromo farmers from their ancestral lands round Addis Ababa beneath the governments Addis Ababa Built-in Grasp Plan which can give their land to authorities supporters or promote it to international traders.
Oromo and Ogaden towards Ethiopian killings
Help Starvation Strike in Israeli Jails – G4S Victoria Road
It was a brief stroll to the London HQ of G4S the place campaigners supported by the Islamic Human Rights Fee had been protesting in solidarity with the mass starvation strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails demanding an finish to Israels’s unlawful coverage of rolling Administrative Detention which might jail them for years with out cost or trial.
The put up a stall and banners on the large pavement outdoors the constructing and spoke to folks passing, handing out leaflets. Some stopped to speak and principally expressed shock at what was taking place in Israel, though one man stopped to argue, telling the protesters that nobody was held unjustly in jail in Israel and there was no torture in Israel. He was clearly deluded.
The world’s largest safety agency G4S offered safety companies for Israel’s prisons till December 2016 when stress from this and plenty of different protests led it to promote is Israeli subsidiary divesting from Israel’s army checkpoints and unlawful settlements. After additional protests the corporate to promote its determined to promote its remaining enterprise in apartheid Israel in June 2023.
Help Starvation Strike in Israeli Jails
Solidarity with Ukrainian Miners – Holborn
Lastly I joined Ukrainian Socialist Solidarity and IWGB commerce unionists who protested outdoors the registered workplaces of London mining firm Evraz who personal mines within the metropolis of Kryviy Rih in south-east Ukraine.
Kryviy Rih is the centre of the most important metal business in Japanese Europe an has a inhabitants of round three-quarters of 1,000,000 folks. Miners there have protested because the unrest and devaluation in Ukraine has precipitated a speedy rise in the price of residing with a fall in actual wages of round 30-50% and an increase of 20% they’d been promised in April was not paid. As an alternative they got an small “insulting” one-off handout.
The Unbiased Union of Miners of Ukraine has demanded a right away doubling of the true wage “within the pursuits of preserving social peace on this nation.” They are saying the primary explanation for the financial issues in Ukraine “is the greed of Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, who pay a beggar’s wage to employees, ship all their income off-shore and don’t pay taxes in Ukraine. Actually the oligarchs are nearly utterly exempt from taxes on their income.” Evraz is owned by Russian Oligarchs Roman Abramov and Alexander Abramovitch who’re primarily based within the UK.
The protest befell after the Ukrainian union known as upon the British public to picket the workplaces of EVRAZ plc and the workplaces of different Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs’ companies in London and different cities in Europe.
However police attending the protest instructed the protesters these workplaces are cimply these of a agency offering accounting, tax, Human Sources and payroll companies to varied companies and aren’t actually part of Evraz. Additional protests had been deliberate outdoors the Chelsea Soccer floor, additionally owned by Roman Abramovitch and for an EVRAZ Investor Day the next month which firm chair Alexander Abramov is because of attend.
Solidarity with Ukrainian Miners
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Tags: Alberto Durango, Alexander Abramovitch, Chelsea, shut Guantánamo, Ethiopia, Ethiopians, Evraz, G4S, Backyard Halls, starvation strike, Unbiased Staff of Nice Britain, Islamic Human Rights Fee, Israel, Israeli jails, IWGB, Kryviy Rih, London, London Guantánamo Marketing campaign, mass killing, Nationwide Liberation Entrance, Obama, Ogaden, Oromo land, President Obama, protest, Roman Abramov, Russian oligarchs, Senate Home, Ukraine, Ukrainian Miners, UoL, US Support, Witness Towards Torture, employees redundant
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