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Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 20:39:25 -0000 From: "J." <juche_86> Subject: Re: Swp the War Coalition demo
Report from Sussex Uni Coalition Against War on their contingent to Saturdays Protest in London...
Sussex Students at Anti-War Protest Sussex University Coalition Against The War sent a double-decker of 60 students, along with our banner inscribed with our coalition name, to the national anti-war demonstration on Saturday 2nd March in London where they met over 10,000 other people on the protest. George Bush has stated openly now that this campaign of militarisation of the world under the US and internal repression is a permanent and intensifying feature of US policy at home and abroad, and, as ever, the US's junior partner, Britain's Labour government, is going with what big brother says. PSD To HTML conversion is important to webmasters because they cannot use the PSD file as it is for their web pages. if you need PSD To HTML conversion service save yourself some time, effort and money and send it in to the professionals. What has this meant for Britain? It has meant that the Terrorism Act 2000 has been used extensively against British citizens (many of the times young people who happen to be Asian) who are suspected of influencing government policy by force. Refusal to comply with internment (imprisonment without trial), refusing to answer questions or giving fingerprints which will be kept forever, may result in 3 months imprisonment and/or £2,500 fine. I myself have been detained and questioned under this act and so has my best friend. We are both conducting purely non-violent democratic work in this country, but because we wore Palestinian solidarity badges we treated worse than criminals. Nelson Mandela has stated that "Palestinians are not struggling for a "state" but for freedom, liberation and equality, just like we were struggling for freedom in South Africa." (to Thomas L. Friedman, Columnist for the New York Times 11-2-2002., taken from www.pflp-pal.org), are all those who supported the anti-apartheid struggle supporters of terrorists? The Palestinians are also freedom fighters just as the ANC were. My friend Fahim was jailed for 17 hours where he was tortured, physically and mentally, by British police. Dozens of people are NOW in jail, without being found guilty of anything, under this act and the newer 'emergency' legislation, which can detain foreigners indefinitely under suspicion of terrorist activities. It's the Prevention of Terrorism Act all over again, this time broader and an attack on everyone (see the famous film 'In The Name of The Father' for what this act did to people, especially Irish people in Britain). If you stand up for people struggling for freedom you will be next. This is the reason why Sussex students took with them a banner they made saying 'Taking Liberties' with a silhouette of a person hanging in chains. You could be next, make your voice heard.What about all the rest of the people around the world who are being targeted by this aggression? The people of Korea, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Colombia, Afghanistan, Palestine and many others. They too are on the US's and UK's list of targets. Can we stand aside and be duped by the media hype of 'rogue' and 'irresponsible' states? Who threw millions of people against each other in two world wars? It wasn't them. Who dropped atom bombs and napalm and Agent Orange on countries thousands of miles away? Not them. That is why we would urge you to join our movement; discuss, learn, organise and give solidarity to a world based on fraternity and prosperity, not aggression and poverty. That's why we took the Palestine banner, and that's why we took the banner against US intervention in Colombia. The Sussex contingent were the loudest, best organised and vocally politicised section of the demo. Said one writer on the British Indymedia site; "Great demo. Massive respect to the Sussex University especially for organising a cohesive large number of students whose spirit and shouting skillz were inspirational!" (from http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=23952&group=webcast) We chanted loud slogans such as "Abu-Ali, rest in peace, hands off the middle east, Iraqi people need some peace, hands off the Middle East (Abu Ali Mustafa is a Palestinian leader who was killed in his office by rockets from Israeli gun-ships), "Who's the real terrorist? Bush is the terrorist! Blair is the terrorist! Sharon is the terrorist!". At a number of times we sat down and, because the rest of the demo made some space in front of us, we did running charges against nothing except the empty space in front of us. This had a great effect on our confidence and on other people. This resulted in the police having words with Sussex students Taimur Rahman and Sukant Chandan. The former told us that we would stop our charges if the sergeant stated that he was against military aggression, it didn't happen. Sukant brushed aside a policeman by saying on the megaphone "don't worry Mr Policeman, it's all jiggy!" and later, "yes we will move sir, we've done this before". We had a brief sit-down in Leicester Square; by this time our section had grown at least three times attracting many other protestors including many young Asians and Arabs. We sat down and stated that we, in the heart of British Imperialism, are not with our government but with the people of the world who struggle against neo-liberal globalisation. The police got stressed, filmed us, surrounded us, but they had nothing to worry about as we were only exercising our democratic right to march, nothing more. We then proceeded to the end of the demonstration, at Trafalgar Square to listen to the likes of Tony Benn to George Galloway, mostly people from the ruling party of British imperialism talking of how they are against military aggression. It is no secret that the world is becoming more militarised and repressive. We, as students who have the time, more than others, to study the conditions in which people live, have a particular onus to do something about this. People are being adversely affected today, both at home and abroad, and you will be next, and in many ways, as government funding for education is decreasing, and funding for the military is increasing, you are all hit targets already. Get up, stand up for our rights! [SUCAW meetings every Wednesday .] |