Union Busting, Tibet, Girls & Sharia: My work on Saturday seventh March started outdoors style retailer Prada in Mayfair. I moved on to the Chinese language Embassy for the annual Tibet Freedom March, then to Portman Sq. for a Worldwide Girls’s Day march and eventually to Trafalgar Sq. the place ‘One Legislation for All’ have been marching to a public assembly in opposition to using Sharia and different faith-based legal guidelines within the UK.
Union Busting – Simply SO Final Season – Prada, Previous Bond St
A dozen individuals from Labour Behind the Label, a part of the worldwide ‘Clear Garments Marketing campaign’ which campaigns in assist of garment employees worldwide have been protesting outdoors Prada, one of many best-known luxurious manufacturers world wide.
The ridiculously costly style luxurious items its prospects purchase should not made in Milan the place Prada was founding however in factories such because the DESA manufacturing facility in Turkey. Employees there are on ridiculously low pay and work lengthy shifts – typically as much as 40 hours.
When in April 2008 employees at DESA determined to affix the Turkish leather-based employees union, 44 have been sacked and 50 pressured to resign from the union.
Demonstrations outdoors the DESA manufacturing facility have led to repression and arrests and when one union chief refused to simply accept a bribe, her household was threatened, and later that day males on a bike tried to kidnap her 11 12 months outdated daughter.
Prada wasn’t the one luxurious items vendor taking advantage of this despicable exploitation – the DESA manufacturing facility within the Dzce Industrial Zone additionally makes items for Mulberry, Louis Vuitton, Samsonite, Aspinal of London, Nicole Farhi and Luella.
In addition to publishing extra concerning the protest – and naturally extra footage, my London Diary publish additionally identified that it isn’t simply the excessive worth designer labels that assist sweatshops, but in addition Matalan and different low-cost suppliers and supermarkets – and urged readers to go to the Labour Behind the Label web page to search out out extra and assist their actions.
Union Busting – Simply SO Final Season
Tibet Freedom March – 50 Years – Chinese language Embassy
The march marked the fiftieth anniversary of the brutal repression by China of the ‘Tibetan Folks’s Rebellion‘, when over 80,000 Tibetans have been killed and plenty of others jailed.
It was then the Dalai Lama fled the nation together with many others. These nonetheless in Tibet nonetheless undergo the identical type of brutal repression, with 1000’s lacking after the demonstrations in Tibet in 2008, and lots of serving prolonged jail sentences.
Many on the protest carried Tibetan flags. Two months earlier a younger Tibetan, Pema Tsepak, had been crushed to demise for carrying one in his personal city in Tibet.
At the beginning of the march reverse the Chinese language Embassy, Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan monk who spent 33 years in jail and labour camps from 1959 to 1992 and was completely broken by the beatings and inhumane torture he suffered tried to ship a letter to the Chinese language Embassy however the Embassy was not accepting any publish.
Gyatso’s autobiography was the idea for the movie, ‘Fireplace Below the Snow‘ – you’ll be able to watch a trailer on YouTube.
I left the march when it reached Oxford Avenue to go to the Worldwide Girls’s Day march.
Tibet Freedom March – 50 Years
Million Girls Rise 2009 – Portman Sq., Oxford St
The primary celebration of Worldwide Girls’s Day in London in 2009 was the ‘Million Girls Rise 2009‘, a women-only march to finish male violence in opposition to girls.
This annual march because it began the earlier 12 months coincided with the worldwide United Nation theme for 2009 which was ‘Men and women united to finish violence in opposition to girls and ladies‘, however Million Girls Rise is a women-only march.
This 12 months the numbers appeared relatively smaller, regardless of the predictions of a a lot bigger occasion, nevertheless it was nonetheless a full of life occasion and one which made a larger affect with its route by London’s main procuring streets – Oxford Avenue and Regent Avenue and throughout Piccadilly Circus to a rally in Waterloo Place.
As they marched the ladies chanted their predominant message: “Nonetheless we gown, wherever we go, sure means sure, no means no!” and referred to as for an finish to male violence in opposition to girls.
This was a nationwide march with coaches bringing girls from Birmingham, Bradford, Hebden Bridge, Wales, Nottingham and Todmorden in addition to different teams coming from across the nation. There was additionally a robust participation by Kurdish and Turkish teams primarily based in London.
One group marched behind the primary march, selecting to comply with the UN theme relatively than be a women-only march; “the European Confederation of Employees from Turkey (ATIK) Girls’s Fee group included males marching (as their placards proclaimed in Turkish) in a spirit of socialist equality, fraternity and freedom.”
One Legislation For All – No Sharia Legislation in Britain – Trafalgar Sq.
The One Legislation for All marketing campaign had been launched three months earlier on Human Rights Day by outstanding civil rights activists, attorneys, feminists and lecturers in addition to the Nationwide Secular Society.
Amongst these supporting it have been many who had beforehand lived underneath Sharia, together with each Muslims and ex-Muslims, some who had fled their dwelling international locations to assert asylum after persecution for political actions together with the refusal to stick to non secular dictats.
The organisation objects to the organising of Sharia courts within the UK, on the grounds that Sharia regulation is discriminatory and unjust, significantly in opposition to girls and youngsters. Whereas supporters of spiritual courts see these as selling minority rights and social cohesion they see them as an inexpensive brief minimize to injustice and name for one secular regulation to control all of us.
After an hour of speeches One Legislation for All Spokesperson Maryam Namazie made a last tackle earlier than the roughly 250 individuals current marched to a public assembly at Conway Corridor. However I left for dwelling as a substitute.
One Legislation For All – No Sharia in Britain
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Tags: 2009, fiftieth anniversary, Chinese language Embassy, Dalai Lama, DESA, style, Fireplace Below the Snow, garment employees, worldwide girls’s day, Labour Behind the Label, London, luxurious style, march, Maryam Namazie, million girls rise, No Sharia Legislation, One Legislation for All, Palden Gyatso, peter Marshall, Prada, protest, Sharia courts, swaeatshops, Tibet, Tibet Freedom March, Tibetan flags, Tibetan Folks’s Rebellion, Tibetans, torture, Turkey, union-busting, violence in opposition to girls, women-only march
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