28 Feb 2012 | Uncategorized
The evictions of Occupy London sites at St Paul’s Cathedral and the School of Ideas show a systemic contempt for the right to protest if that dissent threatens profit.
The 80 people living at the St Paul’s site and the 40-50 living at an abandoned school building near Old Street were greeted in the small hours of the morning with police vans, bailiffs, riot cops and a gaggle of press photographers. Supporters received text messages and tweets from people on site and those who could make the post-midnight journey came down to stand in support or rubberneck over the police lines set up around it. Occupy’s tech team began a long night of tweeting and livestream broadcasts. As the sun rose over a hazy London, the bulldozers arrived at the School of Ideas and before most people had finished their breakfasts and set off on their morning commutes, the abandoned Islington school was no more. And St Paul’s was, for the first time since 15 October 2011, clear of tents and banners.
After a decision from the Court of Appeal was passed to prevent an appeal for protesters to remain encamped on the St Paul’s site, life there began to show signs of strain. The weekend before the eviction, most of the residential tents were still in place but some of the larger structures at the side of the cathedral were taken down or relocated. People were pre-empting a “dawn raid” — as in the way the Parliament Square anti-war encampments were evicted. It was no longer a case of if, but when.
So when the floodlights arrived just after midnight with its chorus of riot police and neon-vested bailiffs, they were expected. Some people chose to wear their tents instead of have them destroyed, and others built a structure out of pallets and stood on it in token resistance to the eviction. Police arrested 23 protesters but for the most part, people decamped to the remaining Occupy site at Finsbury Square and began the process of asking “what now?”
The High Court’s decision in favour of the City of London Corporation was an attempt to put the nail in the coffin of the Occupy movement’s protest and dissent. The swathe of evictions across all Occupy sites is the state’s way of trying to bury it. Ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Games, the erection of tents and the possession of sleeping equipment on Olympic sites were declared unlawful. Reports that government ministers are drafting legislation loosely based on part 3 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 and that they will invoke the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 to protect Olympic branding and sponsors make this government’s position on what matters crystal clear. This is legislation for the short term that will carry the weight of precedent against your human right to protest in the long term. Do not mess with the money machine. You can have “peaceful protest” but the minute you start cutting near the bone, you will be stopped. Your free speech ends where the profit margin begins.
The bleary eyes of the occupiers are dead today. Their bodies are slumped in exhaustion on a muddy plot of land next to a car park and the Bloomberg building. But their heels are digging into the soil as they vow to carry on.
It matters little what you personally feel about the global Occupy Movement and London’s part in it. You could be devoted to it as a zeitgeist, you can maintain that occupation should be a political tactic used to achieve tangible change or you could say that the sight of riot police on the steps of St Paul’s cathedral at 2am was the most radical thing to come out of that plot of land. The truth is this — gambling by financial institutions around the world has crippled the many for the benefit of the few. The blind eye turned by governments to this wanton destruction of lives shows that our will as the people to form the basis of authority of government has been raped. We are no longer equal before the law.
27 Feb 2012 | Russia
More than 30,000 people encircled Moscow in a human chain along Sadovoe Kolco, a 10-mile long road surrounding the city yesterday.
Protesters were calling for fair elections and for the ousting of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Arguably, the biggest surprise of the protest was its participants. What was once referred to as a “hipster-revolution” has become a broader movement. Yesterday’s human chain united people across social class, age, gender and even political creed. There were hard-core leftists but also liberals and disillusioned former Putinistas. There were mothers and fathers with their children (and dogs, too). There were, of course, youngsters – but also many, many elderly people as well.
Kaya Ivanovna, a 80-year-old former librarian found out about the protests from the radio. “There are many more prohibitions, and all the interesting TV programmes that made us reflect and discuss were shut down. I want real change”.
The unusual protest started at 2pm and continued for a couple of hours under the abundant snow covering the capital. Moscow, a usually grey and unwelcoming city, yesterday displayed a ten-mile-long smile.
The only note of unrest in an otherwise peaceful demonstration was the impromptu action organised by the opposition party Left Front in Revolution Square. The unauthorised protest triggered scuffles with the police and the ultra-nationalist group Nashi.
Index was there and filmed the Left Front’s leader Sergei Udaltsov’s statement before the clashes and arrests started. “We are here to celebrate our own Maslennitsa [the Russian spring feast celebrated yesterday]”, he said. “We want to get rid of the political winter, and we want a new political spring to come to Russia starting from today”.
Meanwhile, thousands of Russians are preparing to serve as election observers for the elections to be held on 4 March. Referring to the huge number of registrations the daily newspaper Vedomosti referenced “A country of observers”.
The next protest action is planned for election day 4 March but many believe that 5 March will be the day when the movement “for fair elections” will see its biggest demonstration yet.
Tena Prelec is a freelance writer and consultant at the ESOP Centre, London.
27 Feb 2012 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa
A Cairo military court on Sunday heard witness testimony in a case against a soldier who allegedly performed “virginity tests” on seven female protesters on 10 March 2011.
22-year-old Samira Ibrahim filed a lawsuit against the military doctor whom she accuses of conducting the tests on her and six other female detainees near Tahrir Square. In December, Ibrahim won an earlier case against the Supreme Council of the Armed Force (SCAF) when a Cairo Administrative Court ruled that virginity checks should not take place again in military prisons. According to human rights lawyer Hossam Bahgat the landmark ruling was the first of its kind against the military and was “the first crack in the SCAF’s impunity.”
In this second case, the defendant has denied performing the tests, insisting that he had simply asked the detainees if they were virgins rather than subjecting them to physical tests.
In Sunday’s court session, Rasha Abdel Rahman, a protester who claims to have undergone a virginity test after she was arrested on 9 March 2011, offered the court a graphic description of her ordeal. Abdel Rahman said she had been strip-searched by a female prison guard in an exposed space where the door and windows were left wide open. According to Abdel Rahman the doctor performed the test as soldiers walked past, she was threatened with beatings and electrocution if she refused to comply.
“Imagine if you, your daughter, sister or wife were subjected to such violation?” Abdel Rahman asked in a video she had earlier posted on YouTube. She says the traumatic experience continues to haunt her.
Other witnesses in the case included human rights activist Mona Seif, founder of the No to Military Trials campaign and Heba Morayef, a Human Rights Watch researcher.
They testified that Generals Mohamed El Assar and Hassan el Ruweiny had described the tests as a routine procedure in military prisons. Explaining that during official meetings El Assar and el Ruweiny described the tests as a “defensive measure” so that the women could not later claim they had been raped or sexually violated while in prison. Amnesty International also sent a written testimony citing an acknowledgement from a third general that the tests had been performed.
On 27 May 2011 in an interview with me on CNN, a senior military general admitted for the first time that virginity tests were performed on the female detainees. At the time, CNN did not disclose the general’s name. While testifying in court Sunday, I revealed my source was General Ismail Etman, who at the time was Head of the Armed Forces Morale Affairs department.
The court also heard from the defendant’s lawyers who claimed Abdel Rahman’s story did not match Ibrahim’s earlier story. The defence went on to point out that the other witnesses all worked for “foreign organisations”— suggesting that these organisations had hidden agendas, an allegation which has been frequently repeated by SCAF and government officials in recent weeks.
Ibrahim’s lawyers described the court session as a theatrical drama and a farce saying that the verdict was probably predetermined. The lawyers added that the case should have been referred to a civilian court to guarantee a fair trial.
“However, we are putting up a fight in order to reveal the truth,” Hossam Bahgat told reporters gathered outside the Nasr City military courthouse.
The court adjourned until 11 March when a verdict is expected.
23 Feb 2012 | Russia
Pussy Riot is a feminist punk collective from Moscow. They hide their faces under coloured balaclavas, use nicknames to remain anonymous and perform unsanctioned concerts in peculiar places. Since their emergence last autumn Pussy Riot have performed in underground stations, in shops and on trolleybuses and detention centres’ roofs.
Pussy Riot came to the attention of Russia’s anti-extremist police. In late January they performed an anti-Putin song in the Red Square right in front of Kremlin. The performers were arrested and had to spend several hours in a police cell.
But this week’s “concert” brought them real public attention after they performed what they called a punk prayer “Mother of God, send Putin away” in Moscow’s biggest Orthodox Cathedral. It is the Cathedral high-ranking officials usually attend on the biggest Orthodox holidays. The leader of the Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, is a Putin supporter.
The band got into the cathedral just like regular parishioners, but then started dancing and shouting out anti-Putin words:
KGB head is the biggest saint, who leads protesters to pre-trial prisons … The Patriarch believes in Putin. He should rather believe in God … Mother of God, become a feminist… Send Putin away
The group managed to evade the cathedral’s security, and no one was arrested. Even if one of them did get arrested, she would be quickly replaced, the women explained to journalists. Pussy Riot has no leaders or permanent participants — they are just an anonymous group of punk feminists fighting authoritarianism.
