Kali Mercier, Amnesty International, Jeremy Dear, National Union of Journalists and Owen Tudor, Trades Union Congress, at the Gambia demonstration
Despite the imminent threat of rain, fifty outraged people gathered outside the Gambia High Commission in Kensington, London today (21 July) to protest the lack of freedom for people living in the Gambia. Specifically, we were keen to highlight the lack of press freedom in the country.
Amnesty International’s section in the UK was joined in the protest by the Trades Union Congress and the National Union of Journalists, as well as by a contingent of Gambians living in the UK – including a number of refugees, driven out of the country by human rights abuses there.
London Guantánamo campaign action on 11 January 2009
The London Guantánamo Campaign with partner organizations held a demonstration outside the US Embassy in Mayfair on January 11, 2009.
Speakers included Green MEP for London Jean Lambert, CND Vice President and peace activist Walter Wolfgang, veteran peace campaigner and prisoner rights activist Bruce Kent, Martin Linton, Labour MP for Battersea, Camilla Jelbart, Campaign Coordinator at Amnesty International’s International Secretariat, Joy Hurcombe from Brighton Against Guantánamo and Imam Shakeel Begg from Lewisham Mosque.
Rap artist Mohammed Yahya performed a special song he had composed in solidarity with the detainees, and Mousa Brown who had been detained at Belmarsh and later acquitted by a jury in a “terror” trial spoke of his own experiences in the UK and how difficult it was for him and his family, even though he still had some access to them.
I came back from the demonstration in front of Mr. Brown’s office, at 10 Downing Street in London, in a good mood and with a utopian sense of hope.
There was a mix of powerful energy, clear demands, clocks, banners and a crowd of around 150 people backing up the demands that heads of the different organizations present and a Congolese youth activist made to the Prime Minister.
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