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| Julian Assange slates imperialism |
By Caroline Colebrook
THOUSANDS of peace campaigners filled Trafalgar Square last
Saturday for a rally organised by Stop the War, the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament and the Muslim Association of Britain to commemorate the tenth
anniversary if the war against Afghanistan.
In October 2001 US
President George Bush used the excuse of the 11th September attacks to launch a
war on Afghanistan
that he had been planning anyway.
He dubbed it the “War
on Terror” and also used this excuse to invade Iraq
in March 2003.
The Stop the War
organisation was founded in response to the attack on Afghanistan
and has campaigned against imperialist wars in the Middle East
ever since.
The wars in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and now Libya
have cost the lives of many hundreds of British soldiers and more than a
million civilians in those countries.
The rally heard a
long array of speakers condemning the wars and saw films displayed illustrating
the history of the struggle for peace on giant screens.
Speakers included
106-year-old veteran peace campaigner Hetty Bower. She told the rally of how,
in 1914 at the age of nine, her father had told the family: “It seems we are at
war; this is where the lies begin”.
“We were told the
Germans were cutting off the hands of Belgian children. The lies have changed
now but they still go on,” said Hetty, and she made a plea for world peace.
Speakers included Joe
Glenton, a former soldier who refused to do a second tour of duty in Afghanistan
because he had realised that “The Afghan people were not the enemy, it was the
senior officers ordering us to shoot them”.
He quoted the First
World War poet Siegfried Sassoon about “the war is being prolonged by those who
have the power to end it”.
Guardian journalist
Seamus Milne spoke of a war “not on terror but of terror”.
Singer Brian Eno
delivered a long list of the costs of the wars and what that money could be
used for.
Julian Assange, the
founder of Wikileaks, attacked those journalists who propagate the
imperialists’ lies used to justify the horrors of war.
Billy Hayes, general
secretary of the Communication Workers’ Union and Len
McCluskey of Unite were among the speakers, who also included Bruce Kent, Tony
Benn, George Galloway, Jemima Khan, John Pilger, Lindsey German and Jeremy
Corbyn MP.
Joan Humphries whose
grandson Kevin Elliot was killed in Afghanistan
spoke for herself and other families of soldiers who have died there. She laid
the blame squarely at the feet of those who had ordered our army to invade Afghanistan.
There were many
writers, actors, musicians, academics and former soldiers who spoke – and
schoolgirls new to peace campaigning.
All around the Square
there were stalls from different campaigns, performance events, art
installations, and debates.
One campaign called
for the release of Shaker Aamer, a London
resident whose wife and family live in Battersea, who is still held prisoner in
Guantanamo Bay,
and for the release of Babar Ahmad, a 37-year-old British Muslim who has been
detained without charge in this country since August 2004.
At around 4pm the crowd assembled for a short march down Whitehall
to present a petition at Downing Street.
As police tried to
herd the demonstrators into pens some campaigners staged a sit-down across the
road (most had been on their feet for over four hours), which prompted police
to kettle the area for a short time but there were no arrests and the
protesters dispersed soon after.
Earlier that
afternoon in a totally separate event a small group of English Defence League
members had presented a petition at Downing Street.
After this a couple of their members had wandered up to Trafalgar
Square.
But if they had hoped
to disrupt the peace rally or try to provoke the many young Muslims there they
failed. A small group of police officers kept them completely surrounded until
they left the square.
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