UK; Student activists condemn police spying on protest groups

Socialist Students, one of the organisations at the heart of the 2010 student movement against tuition fees, has strongly condemned recent revelations about police surveillance of political campaigns and student activists. Students from the group, who are involved in organising against cuts, fees and privatisation on campuses, have said it ‘makes a mockery’ of the democratic right to protest in Britain.  This comes a day following a student demonstration against the closure of the University of London Union, which saw a large and heavy handed police presence prevent students from entering their own campus and, following which, the president of the students’ union has been arrested.

Edmund Schluessel, Socialist Students member and NUS National Executive Councillor said:

“The videos released give categorical evidence that the police targeted groups on a political basis, including those involved in peaceful protest. This follows several revelations of police surveillance of activists, which included systematic infiltration of groups like Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE) during the 1990s.The huge student movement of 2010 broke the consensus and in many ways humiliated the police. These are outrageous attacks on basic democratic freedoms and the right to protest. These surveillance techniques, coupled with heavy handed and often violent policing, are designed to limit the effectiveness of protests and intimidate demonstrators. Protest is increasingly becoming a criminalised act. Alongside this, anti-trade union laws are making strike action increasingly difficult to organise legally. Clearly, there is a deep seated fear at the heart of the establishment about the potential momentum that campaigns like these could gain. As brutal austerity intensifies and Cameron declares its permanency, it is vital that we defend the right to protest.”

Socialist Students is campaigning defend the right to protest. They plan to link up with other groups, such as YRE, to build the fight for democratic rights.

James Connolly and the Uprising of 1916

By Jim Hargreaves

One hundred years ago the Irish Citizen Army was founded in response to the brutality of strikebreaking in Ireland, which was mainly done by the Dublin Metropolitan Police. It’s aim was to defend strikers and workers from the barbaric attacks of the police.

One of the co-founders of the ICA was a man called James Connolly.

By 1915, Britain had as much control of Ireland as it did over England. Home rule was suspended until the end of the war, and Connolly’s paper ‘The Workers’ Republic was shut down by the authorities in Dublin castle.

James Connolly was appointed acting General Secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. By now, Connolly had become very militant. He paraded units of the Irish Citizens Army in Dublin, but such displays made those who had left the Irish Volunteers and gone to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) very anxious, as they were planning to start an uprising. They felt that such displays would attract the attention of the authorities, which would crush the uprising before it even began. In an effort to bring Connolly on board and to tame his more wild displays of militancy, the IRB took him into their confidence. Connolly was told about the planned rebellion for Easter 1916. After this, Connolly took an active part in the preparations and he was appointed Military Commander of the Republican Forces in Dublin, which encompassed the Irish Citizens Army.

When the uprising started on Monday 24th April, James Connolly was one of the seven signatories to the Proclamation. Connolly was in command of the General Post Office during the rebellion – the rebels headquarters. He was severely wounded during the fighting and was arrested once the rebels had surrendered. After the surrender, Connolly stated this:

“Don’t worry. Those of us that signed the proclamation will be shot. But the rest of you will be set free.”

He was court-martialled in a military hospital in Dublin. Charged with treason, there was no doubt as to what the verdict and punishment would be.

At his court martial, Connolly made the following statement:

“We want to break the connection between this country and the British Empire, and to establish an Irish Republic. ”

“We succeeded in proving that Irishmen are ready to die endeavouring to win for Ireland those national rights which the British government has been asking them to die, to win for Belgium. As long as that remains the case, the cause of Irish freedom is safe. I personally thank God that I have lived to see the day when thousands of Irish men and boys, and hundreds of Irish women and girls, were ready to affirm that truth, and to attest it with their lives if need be”

James Connolly was sentenced to death. Some of the employers with whom he had battled in the ‘Great Lock-Out’ of 1913, called on the British government to execute Connolly.

On May 12th,1916, Connolly was shot by firing squad. He had been taken by military ambulance to Kilmainham Prison, carried on a stretcher to a courtyard in the prison, tied to a chair and shot. With the other executed rebels, his body was put into a mass grave with no coffin. All the executions of the rebels angered many Irish people who had shown little support for the rebels during the rebellion. However, it was the circumstances of Connolly’s execution that created the most anger.

Connolly was among the few European members of the Second International who opposed, outright, World War I. This put him at odds with most of the socialist leaders of Europe, most of whom betrayed the working class by condoning an imperialist land-grab which pitted proletarian against proletarian.

“Tayyip, resign”

Police raid on Istanbul park triggers night of rioting

By Ayla Jean Yackley and Seda Sezer

ISTANBUL | Sun Jun 16, 2013 5:57am EDT

Protesters occupy Bosphorous Bridge, Istanbul, Turkey

(Reuters) – Thousands of people took to the streets of Istanbul overnight on Sunday, erecting barricades and starting bonfires, after riot police firing teargas and water cannon stormed a park at the center of two weeks of anti-government unrest.

Lines of police backed by armored vehicles sealed off Taksim Square in the center of the city as officers raided the adjoining Gezi Park late on Saturday, where protesters had been camped in a ramshackle settlement of tents.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan had warned hours earlier that security forces would clear the square, the center of more than two weeks of fierce anti-government protests that spread to cities across the country, unless the demonstrators withdrew before a ruling party rally in Istanbul on Sunday.

“We have our Istanbul rally tomorrow. I say it clearly: Taksim Square must be evacuated, otherwise this country’s security forces know how to evacuate it,” he told tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters at a rally in Ankara.

Protesters took to the streets in several neighborhoods across Istanbul following the raid on Gezi Park, ripping up metal fences, paving stones and advertising hoardings to build barricades and lighting bonfires of trash in the streets.

Some chanted, “Tayyip, resign.”

Local television footage showed groups of demonstrators blocking a main highway to Ataturk airport on the western edge of the city, while to the east, several hundred walked towards a main bridge crossing the Bosphorus waterway towards Taksim.

Thousands more rallied in the working-class Gazi neighborhood, which saw heavy clashes with police in the 1990s, while protesters also gathered in Ankara around the central Kugulu Park, including opposition MPs who sat in the streets in an effort to prevent the police from firing teargas.

A main public-sector union confederation, KESK, which has some 240,000 members, said it would call a national strike for Monday, while a second union grouping said it was holding an emergency meeting to decide whether to join the action.

“One million people to Taksim” – a call for more anti-government demonstrations later on Sunday – was a top-trending hashtag on Twitter.

“The police brutality aims at clearing the streets of Istanbul to make way for Erdogan’s meeting tomorrow,” said Oguz Kaan Salici, Istanbul president of the main opposition People’s Republican Party.

“Yet it will backfire. People feel betrayed.”

CLOUDS OF TEARGAS

A similar police crackdown on peaceful campaigners in Gezi Park two weeks ago provoked an unprecedented wave of protest against Erdogan, drawing in secularists, nationalists, professionals, trade unionists and students who took to the streets in protest at what they see as his autocratic style.

The unrest, in which police fired teargas and water cannon at stone-throwing protesters night after night in cities including Istanbul and Ankara, left four people dead and about 5,000 injured, according to the Turkish Medical Association.

Panicked protesters fled into an upscale hotel at the back of Gezi Park during Saturday night’s raid, several of them vomiting, as clouds of teargas and blasts from percussion bombs – designed to create confusion rather than injure – engulfed the park.

“We tried to flee and the police pursued us. It was like war,” Claudia Roth, co-chair of Germany’s Greens party, who had gone to Gezi Park to show her support, told Reuters.

The Gezi Park protesters, who oppose government plans to build a replica Ottoman-era barracks there, had defied repeated calls to leave but had started to reduce their presence in the park after meetings with Erdogan and the local authorities.

“This is unbelievable. They had already taken out political banners and were reducing to a symbolic presence in the park,” Koray Caliskan, a political scientist at Bosphorus University, told Reuters from the edge of Gezi Park.

ERDOGAN DEFIANT

Erdogan told protesters on Thursday that he would put the Gezi Park plans on hold until a court rules on them. It was a softer stance after two weeks in which he called protesters “riff-raff” and said the plans would go ahead regardless.

But at the first of two rallies this weekend by his ruling AK Party, he reverted to a defiant tone, telling supporters on the outskirts of Ankara that he would crush his opponents in elections next year.

The police intervention so soon after Erdogan spoke took many by surprise on a busy Saturday night around Taksim, one of Istanbul’s main social hubs, not least after President Abdullah Gul, who has struck a more conciliatory tone than Erdogan, said earlier on Saturday that talks were progressing well.

Erdogan has long been Turkey’s most popular politician, his AK Party winning three successive election victories, each time with a larger share of the vote, but his critics complain of increasing authoritarianism.

He has said the AK Party rallies in Ankara and Istanbul are meant to kick off campaigning for local elections next year and are not related to the protests, but they are widely seen as a show of strength in the face of the demonstrations.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler, Can Sezer, Asli Kandemir, Evrim Ergin in Istanbul, Jonathon Burch and Humeyra Pamuk in Ankara; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Daily Headline – 01/03/13

South African police under fire again

The police force in South Africa is once again under heavy scrutiny after the latest horrific act carried out by its personnel.

Now we all know that all cops are complete bastards but the South African police make those in the UK look like saints…

South African police, in the streets of Johannesburg, as numerous members of the public looked on in horror tied a Mozambican taxi driver to a police van and dragged him the 500 metres to the police station. He died some time later that day of internal bleeding and head injuries.

Other recent events

Recently in the Oscar Pistorius case the leading officer was taken off the case due to 7 pending counts of attempted murder on his file. Oscar’s brother is also due in court for killing a woman with his car.

South African police murdered numerous mine workers in a pay dispute.

Police and those in authority will never work to ‘Protect and Serve’ the people, it’s a fallacy, a myth, an outright lie.

South Africa continues attack on workers

By Leon J Williams

Today saw another attack on workers in South Africa by the police. Last time it was the miners when South African police shot dead more than 30 workers, now the attack is on fruit picking farm workers.

This time last year the SA police killed two workers at the same farm and today they opened fire again, this time with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Currently the farm workers get paid a mere £4.50 a day! They were on strike demanding £9 a day when the attack happened.

For more information:

South African police murder 30+ mine workers.

South African police fire upon farm workers.

UK Fox hunting

By Leon J Williams

It has been reported that up and down the UK up to 250,000 people have attended 250 hunts despite that it is illegal in the UK after the Labour Party introduced the Hunting Act in 2004.
I guess it’s okay for the police to kill an innocent person walking home after work but actually enforcing the law is too much for them.

Tim Bonner of the Countryside Alliance said

“It’s putting ordinary people in a very difficult situation. They are extremely proud of their hunts and want to show it.”

What a cock. Ordinary people want hunting banned in the UK that’s why the ban was implemented in the first place!

Verdict of Tim Bonner: Cock
Verdict of the police: Fuckers

More more details on the hunts click here.