30 Jun 10 | News and features
As Boris Johnson wins his fight to “democracy village”, Bibi van der Zee asks if the courts intend to end the great British tradition of camping in protest
There is an oddity to the traffic arrangements around Parliament Square, but it will take the casual visitor several minutes to spot it. In fact even the keenest of observers may not spot it immediately, until he, or she, wants to cross the busy road to the green square in the middle.
There are no pedestrian crossings. It’s hard to work out where they’ve gone, but they’re just not there now. Instead commuters and tourists who want to break out of the bustle and shove off the pavements and make their way to the green island in the centre have to stride out bravely into the traffic. It’s like The Beach or something.
And this peculiarity makes it a little hard to stomach the fury of some commentators that the protesters in Parliament Square are “removing the liberty of people to walk across a public square”. The fact that the authorities, for reasons of their own, did that years ago, makes the Parliament Square democracy village just the very latest incarnation of the great British tradition of ideological squatters.
Setting up protest camps is something we Brits have done with huge enthusiasm and regularity since time immemorial. Where other nations feel the yoke of the oppressor upon their neck and think “grr, time for revolution”, we think, “ooh, where did we put those tent pegs?”
During the English civil war, the Diggers, led by Gerard Winstanley, tried to take over and cultivate communal land: Winstanley declared that if “the waste land of England were manured by her children, it would become in a few ideas the richest, the strongest and [most] flourishing land in the world”.
And ever since then, at the slightest sign of trouble we just move in. Housing shortage? Take over anything you can find. Don’t like nuclear weapons? Put up tents around the military bases. Opposed to apartheid? Take up residence outside the South African embassy. Want to stop a road being built? Unroll your ground mat right where the inside lane would have been.
Our legal system, which often treasures anomalous rights you’d imagine (if you’d grown up under New Labour) that it would just have hacked to the ground, has carefully preserved the right to do this. In a country where property is God, it is still possible to squat without having your deed-signing hand chopped off. And if you are setting up camp on private land, you can only be “directed to leave” if you’re in a wheeled vehicle or have “caused damage to the land…or used threatening, abusive or insulting language to the landowner” and all who surround him. On public land similar conditions hold, although increasingly military bases and the like can often convince friendly secretaries of states to pass bylaws that sneakily boot the camps.
More recently, our own police were forced to confirm in public (through the means of their self-flagellating Policing Protest report) that we do indeed have a right to peaceful protest which does not necessarily have to be “lawful”.
So what does all that mean for the protest camp in the heart of Parliament Square? Some may think it’s a mess and they’re right, it is a bit of a mess frankly – surely they could neaten it all up a little bit and pitch those tents in straighter lines?
But nevertheless, when I walked through the camp a couple of weeks ago I felt a swell of pride that tourists coming to Britain, visiting our Houses of Parliament and our grand cathedral, would be reminded that here, this is the way we do things. What, I thought, would Chinese, Cubans and Colombians make of it? In those countries protesters are thrown into prison or killed, not allowed to set up a permanent picket.
Despite all the best efforts of the government to make Parliament Square a no-protest zone, we’ve politely declined that option. Thank you but no. We’d rather have the freedom to express our mad, anarchic British feelings in public, under canvas, with a primus stove, a cup of tea and a handy parliament to pass legislation on whether Steve in tent four should be allowed to play his wind-up radio until 9pm or 10. Now, can we have the crossings back so that we can pop over to congratulate them without being run over?
Bibi van der Zee is a journalist and author. She recently published Rebel, Rebel: The Protestor’s Handbook
29 Jun 10 | Index Index, minipost
A cameraman has been attacked and beaten by police in Pakistan, after filming violent clashes during a protest in Lahore. According to colleagues Farrukh Asif, who works for the Urdu language station Express News, was approached by police officers as he filmed three protestors being beaten. After refusing to hand over his camera or destroy footage of the incident, Asif himself was attacked. He was taken to a nearby police station and detained, suffering further violence while in custody. After being released, Asif was taken to hospital with injuries to his arms, back, and head, as well as a fractured collarbone.
28 Jun 10 | Uncategorized
Protests in Egypt tend to follow a familiar rhythm. As a veteran observer of more public demonstrations than I can remember, you get a sense of the routine.
There’s usually a few hundred activists, most of them familiar faces from the last eight protests, inevitably surrounded by twice as many black-clad Central Security riot cops. The activists chant their slogans, the police use overwhelming force and well-practised crowd control techniques to keep them penned in one spot, and eventually everybody goes home.
But the protest I covered on Friday in Alexandria felt different and not just because it was attended by Mohamed ElBaradei, the former UN nuclear watchdog who has become an opposition figurehead. The case of Khaled Saeed – a young man beaten to death in public by police, according to multiple witnesses — has tapped into long-simmering tensions that could take Egypt into uncharted territory.
For starters, there was the sheer size of the protest – at least 3,000 people according to organisers. Beyond that, what was striking was the raw anger on display and the number of ordinary, normally apolitical citizens who turned out to protest against what they claim is endemic brutality among Egypt’s police and security forces.
Saeed, 28, was dragged out of an Alexandria internet café on June 6 by two plain-clothed police officers. Several witnesses and the café’s owner have given interviews saying they saw the officers brutally beat Saeed in an alleyway. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
Public anger spiked when pictures of Saeed’s badly mangled face circulated on the internet. Protests in multiple cities intensified when the Interior Ministry claimed the young man had choked to death when swallowing a packet of marijuana as police approached him. The ministry’s version of events was backed by two separate coroner’s reports, prompting claims of a coordinated cover-up.
Saeed’s case is hardly the first publicised incident of Egyptian police brutality. Local and international human right organizations have long documented what they claim is a systemic pattern of torture and intimidation in Egypt’s police stations. But this case has touched a deep and powerful nerve, resonating among ordinary citizens who had probably never considered attending a demonstration before.
When I pulled out my notebook at Friday’s protest, I was engulfed by people clamouring to tell me their own personal tales of injustice and mistreatment at the hands of the police. I could have written down a dozen examples, ranging from harassment and intimidation of political activists to Mafia-style shakedowns.
The framework for all this police misbehaviour is the Emergency Law — a regularly renewed piece of legislation which has placed Egypt under defacto martial law for President Hosni Mubarak’s entire 29-year reign. Saeed has already come to be known as the “Emergency Law Martyr” and activists are hoping to channel the current explosion of popular anger into a genuine push to finally get the law repealed.
Ashraf Khalil is senior reporter for Al Masry Al Youm English Edition
28 Jun 10 | Egypt
This article was written by Ashraf Khalil
Protests in Egypt tend to follow a familiar rhythm. As a veteran observer of more public demonstrations than I can remember, you get a sense of the routine.
There’s usually a few hundred activists, most of them familiar faces from the last eight protests, inevitably surrounded by twice as many black-clad Central Security riot cops. The activists chant their slogans, the police use overwhelming force and well-practised crowd control techniques to keep them penned in one spot, and eventually everybody goes home.
But the protest I covered on Friday in Alexandria felt different and not just because it was attended by Mohamed ElBaradei, the former UN nuclear watchdog who has become an opposition figurehead. The case of Khaled Saeed – a young man beaten to death in public by police, according to multiple witnesses — has tapped into long-simmering tensions that could take Egypt into uncharted territory.
For starters, there was the sheer size of the protest – at least 3,000 people according to organisers. Beyond that, what was striking was the raw anger on display and the number of ordinary, normally apolitical citizens who turned out to protest against what they claim is endemic brutality among Egypt’s police and security forces.
Saeed, 28, was dragged out of an Alexandria internet café on June 6 by two plain-clothed police officers. Several witnesses and the café’s owner have given interviews saying they saw the officers brutally beat Saeed in an alleyway. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
Public anger spiked when pictures of Saeed’s badly mangled face circulated on the internet. Protests in multiple cities intensified when the Interior Ministry claimed the young man had choked to death when swallowing a packet of marijuana as police approached him. The ministry’s version of events was backed by two separate coroner’s reports, prompting claims of a coordinated cover-up.
Saeed’s case is hardly the first publicised incident of Egyptian police brutality. Local and international human right organizations have long documented what they claim is a systemic pattern of torture and intimidation in Egypt’s police stations. But this case has touched a deep and powerful nerve, resonating among ordinary citizens who had probably never considered attending a demonstration before.
When I pulled out my notebook at Friday’s protest, I was engulfed by people clamouring to tell me their own personal tales of injustice and mistreatment at the hands of the police. I could have written down a dozen examples, ranging from harassment and intimidation of political activists to Mafia-style shakedowns.
The framework for all this police misbehaviour is the Emergency Law — a regularly renewed piece of legislation which has placed Egypt under defacto martial law for President Hosni Mubarak’s entire 29-year reign. Saeed has already come to be known as the “Emergency Law Martyr” and activists are hoping to channel the current explosion of popular anger into a genuine push to finally get the law repealed.
