"Occupy Democracy asserts Britain does not have a functioning democracy, a message that threatens the establishment, which is why they came in so heavy-handed and surrounded Parliament Square with fences to stop our protests,” says Maria Saunders, a supporter of the Occupy Democracy movement in London. “When they spoke about it in the House of Lords, Lord Bates, Undersecretary of the Home Office, stressed how the state needed to quickly quell the protest as the numbers were growing. The establishment clearly wants to stamp out dissent and not listen to the voices of the people of this country.” Occupy Democracy began with a nine-day occupation of Parliament Square on Oct. 17, 2014. By Oct. 21, high-level fences were erected, pushing the occupation on to a small strip of grass nearby. Although the protest faced constant harassment – including mass arrest – by police, it continued to host skill-shares, workshops and general assemblies on different topics: from inequality and ecological destruction to corruption in British politics and the progressive alternatives. The peaceful protest returned for a weekend in November with a program that included a talk by the former U.K. Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray – a man the British establishment attempted to silence after he blew the whistle on U.K. complicity with Uzbekistan's human rights abuses. Then, in December, Occupy Democracy turned its focus to Britain’s housing crisis and homelessness, partly in response to a report last year that found that the austerity-driven Coalition Government had contributed to a 34% increase in homelessness. Saunders tells me that after the December occupation, a great deal of the energy went straight into Love HQ, a squatted ex-RBS Bank building where food was handed out to homeless people over Christmas. Despite being evicted by the police, Love HQ managed to continue feeding the homeless while moving to different locations around central London. Since the protest's inception, the policing reaction to Occupy Democracy underlines the degree to which authorities appear to feel threatened by it. Writing in the Guardian, David Graeber described the mass arrests, and the aggressive and at times banal nature of the policing during the October occupation: “The police act as if the possibility of non-violent camping is an existential threat to the very idea of civil government." But demonstrating in public about progressive alternatives isn't the only way Occupy Democracy is challenging the establishment. It has just initiated legal proceedings against authorities as well. Acting as legal representation, the human rights advocacy group Liberty has written to the Greater London Authority (GLA) challenging the blocking off of Parliament Square as unlawful. Liberty argues that the GLA is ignoring its legal duties to facilitate and enable peaceful assembly and protest, rights protected by the European Human Rights convention. The letter requires the GLA to reply by Jan. 19. If the GLA disagrees and states that the policing actions were lawful, Liberty says it will begin procedures to start a judicial review. "
.......................
'via Blog this'
No comments:
Post a Comment