Fatima Najm of Arab News submitted this excellent report from the Feb 24 anti-war demo in London:
Jackie Chase cannot understand why Britain’s foreign policy has failed to reflect the anti-war sentiment swelling around her during a peace rally in Trafalgar Square recently. The music teacher is one of tens of thousands of protesters who poured into the square, holding placards demanding everything from Blair’s resignation, a withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, to an end to Britain’s nuclear weapons program. They also voiced fears over a possible confrontation with Iran.
Whatever their gripe with the government, most protesters agreed on two things: They want Blair to stop war mongering, and they want the people of the Middle East to know they care.
Chase walked through the march in an orange jumpsuit with a black hood over her head chained to several campaigners, to protest the illegal detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
She started the “Save Omar Deghayes” campaign in the hope that British authorities would not condemn an innocent man to the torture and abuse Deghayes has allegedly been subjected to during his time in prison.
Deghayes was a Brighton resident who went to Afghanistan hoping to export dry fruit to wholesalers in the United Kingdom. By the time the Americans began to bomb the country, Deghayes had settled in, and married an Afghani girl. When the situation worsened, he tried to flee across the border to Pakistan to get a British visa for his bride. He was captured in Lahore, taken back to Afghanistan, held at Bagram airbase, and labeled an “Enemy Combatant.”
Five years later, he is one of many “suspects” being held by US authorities at Guantanamo Bay on secret evidence that is presented only to “Combatant Status Review Tribunals.” That evidence is not subject to legal, public or independent scrutiny and is often based only on speculation.
Chase and several Brighton residents said they were there to “put a stop to the atrocities committed in the name of keeping us safe.”
Deghayes’ family believes his predicament may be a case of mistaken identity. A photograph of a man named Omar Deghayes from a Chechen training camp, bearing no resemblance to the dry-fruit vendor Deghayes, was aired on Spanish television on the FBI’s most wanted list. Experts have testified since then that the only thing dry fruit vendor Deghayes shares with the man in the photograph is his name.
“But Omar is still in prison and we know he has been beaten, blinded, his arm broken. We are very concerned for his mental well being and frankly I don’t think the British government can handle the embarrassment of bringing him home now after five years of this abuse, what’s left of him?” said Chase, whose 17-year-old son Sam was also marching to protest illegal military action in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
“What frightens me is our ability to switch off from suffering,” said Chase, “I know people will watch us on the news and say, ‘they look annoyed about something,’ change the channel, and go back to enjoying their warm meal and Ikea furniture.”
According to him, anti-terror legislation, introduced after 9/11 to help the West combat an abstract enemy, has turned a system of representation into a system of top-down government.
“(George Orwell’s) 1984 scenario is not far when you can send a man to prison without evidence, we are completely controlled and all of us in Britain are complicit in making a democracy into a system where we no longer have representation. The government does what it wants,” said Sam, who is outraged that Blair took his country to war and that Blair will let innocent men remain in Guantanamo Bay.
Redoune Zghizhe, a friend of the Deghayes family who works in the food and beverage department of a hotel, is still bemused over his friend’s detention.
“He was just a business man. It is illegal, it is wrong to imprison a man who saw a business opportunity for export and sent to find work abroad, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but this is the world today,” Zghizhe said.
As they walked through cordoned-off streets, tourists snapped photos, while onlookers sometimes clapped, sometimes gawked and jeered at them. They walked on, unconcerned. The campaigners are determined that if they fail to find justice in a court of law, they will continue to seek redress in a court of public opinion.
Keegan, who works for website www.onegreenearth.com said, “We are against this illegal war, all war is unjust, we want it to stop.”
They came out because they find “the mainstream media is not doing its job so it’s up to every individual to draw attention to the injustice of war.”
On the outskirts of the congregation, twenty young demonstrators danced incessantly to music coming from a makeshift sound system.
Ben Gray, who works in the music industry, thinks he has found the ultimate way to get that very message across.
He decided to “sidestep mainstream media and give all these protesters a concrete way to have their voice heard,” by releasing a single called “War what is it good for.” Gray hopes Tony Blair will find it humiliating and is appealing for residents of Britain to text peace1 to 78789 to get it into the charts.
Gray is one of a growing number of Britons enraged that Blair took his country to war over “a pack of lies.” And he is annoyed with the media for not exposing those lies.
“I saw masses of people march in 2003, they were against the war then, and they are against it now, but the government doesn’t listen,” he said. “But if the single makes it into the charts everyone will have to listen. Otherwise we are just preaching to the converted.”
Gray realized that new legislation allowing downloaded songs to enter the charts without having to physically release a single meant they could pull off “a musical referendum.”
“From January downloads can propel singles into the charts and the media, the police, the government can distort the numbers of protesters who show up – when you attend you know there were a lot more than gets reported the next day – but no one can deny the numbers when people are buying the single, and getting Tony Blair into the charts,” he said.
Gray finds delicious irony in the fact that “Blair called his college band “Ugly Rumors,” and now he’s known for spreading ugly rumors,” which is why the music video is available on a site called – you guessed it – www.uglyrumours.com.
“We have been duped and we must resist, and we will not be fooled into an act of aggression with Iran,” said Gray. “I was never an activist, but we all have to speak up now. We have all been betrayed.”
[Written for http://www.arabnews.com]
