Police disrupted and moved a peaceful protest outside the London Greek embassy yesterday afternoon, leading to two arrests. The protest was over the murder of Pavlos Fyssas by a neo-Nazi Golden Dawn activist in Keratsini last week.
Just before 1pm yesterday as I arrived at Holland Park, I saw barriers set up on the pavement, and around 40 people, including the inevitable newspaper sellers with their trestle table, waiting there.
I was slightly confused, as the ‘protest pen’ was outside a large white building that appeared to be private flats. Across the road was a walled entrance to the park, and further along was the Greek Embassy itself, a far from salubrious building that looks like down-market (for the area) flats.
After a few minutes, two people crossed the road to stand on the pavement in front of the embassy with a banner that said ‘United Against Fascism’.
Another man started to use string to tie one end of his banner to a metal lamp-post.
Seemingly unaware of their duty under the European Convention on Human Rights, several of the half a dozen police began to tell people they couldn’t protest there, couldn’t tie anything to a lamp-post and so on. Even after some discussion, and dark mutterings about obstruction and criminal damage, neither of which were occurring, they went off and started bothering other demonstrators who were now arriving and taking up position outside the object of their protests, the embassy.
WPC Pymont (whose lapel ID ‘BS 206’ was not related to the BS she was spouting), was telling people that if you hold a protest, you need to notify and get authority from the police. These cops knowledge of the ECHRA was depressingly woeful, and it’s something the Met should really sort out, as it’s a very basic and fundamental part of policing by consent in a democratic society.
A couple of diplomatic protection police turned up and thankfully made more sense, pointing out the need to protect the Embassy itself under the terms of the Vienna Convention, but otherwise seemingly relaxed about the protest outside.
The protest was called by Syriza activists in the UK (Syriza is the main Greek opposition party, a coalition of left, radical, and green groups trying to work together in a united front). It was also promoted and attended by UK socialists and anti-fascists. They were protesting about the killing of anti-fascist musician Pavlos Fyssas. He was murdered by a member of the neo-Nazi right-wing Golden Dawn party which has taken advantage of austerity cuts to promote its intolerant and hatred fuelled agenda and gain popularity in Greece. Greek protests over the murder were met with violence and repression by the State police.
Soon, the protest pen was abandoned to the newspaper vendors, and most of the demo (comprising around 200 people) was outside the embassy.
A small group of around twenty folk, also outside the pen, stood with their banner and chanted on the pavement directly opposite the embassy and separate from the main crowd. These were the KKE, the Greek Communists who are not part of the Syriza coalition.
The Syriza organiser introduced various speakers on a small megaphone, and the crowd was noisy but peaceful, while around half a dozen cops, and four DPG police guarded the embassy.
Just before 2pm, a bicycle sound system rode up, and between speakers, played some popular Greek anti-fascist tunes.
By now, the crowd was spilling out into the road a little, and a couple of constables were trying to direct people back on to the pavement.
This is when policing became problematic. To facilitate the protest and mitigate inconvenience to the public, what they easily could have done would be remove the barriers and allow pedestrians easy access along the pavement opposite and away from the embassy, and post an officer at each end to calm traffic which could have easily and safely negotiated the partly obstructed road at a slow pace.
But no, they just had to throw their weight around. An Inspector turned up, claimed there was ‘serious disruption to the life of the community’ and imposed Section 14 conditions. He informed the man from Syriza that he’d have to move the protest over to the pen (clearly too small for the numbers there), and that he’d be sending in the TSG to use force if necessary.
The organiser used his megaphone to try to achieve the required movement, but the TSG also moved in and threatened people into moving. Many moved off the pavement and part-way across the road, but there was clearly not enough room for everyone on the opposite pavement.
Then around 2.15, the pushing began, and there was an inevitable skirmish, a young girl was arrested, a man became involved and he was violently seized too. They were then both bundled into a police van and taken away.
Eventually, police realised they weren’t going to fit everyone on the pavement and they gave up.
So now, one pavement was still blocked, just a different one! And the noisy crowd was directly outside people’s private flats rather than outside the park gate and the embassy. And the road, which was previously open to traffic, was blocked at one end by police vans, while traffic coming up the other way were turned back by a constable.
All in, the police had managed to provoke two completely unnecessary arrests, and cause much greater disruption to the community than there was before, and impinge on everyone’s right to protest.
Despite all this, the crowd remained defiant, peaceful, and good-natured, and the sound system carried on pumping out tunes as numbers began to lessen over the next hour, until about 3.15 when there seemed a natural consensus to leave.
More pics and video at indyrikki.wordpress.com
I was slightly confused, as the ‘protest pen’ was outside a large white building that appeared to be private flats. Across the road was a walled entrance to the park, and further along was the Greek Embassy itself, a far from salubrious building that looks like down-market (for the area) flats.
After a few minutes, two people crossed the road to stand on the pavement in front of the embassy with a banner that said ‘United Against Fascism’.
Another man started to use string to tie one end of his banner to a metal lamp-post.
Seemingly unaware of their duty under the European Convention on Human Rights, several of the half a dozen police began to tell people they couldn’t protest there, couldn’t tie anything to a lamp-post and so on. Even after some discussion, and dark mutterings about obstruction and criminal damage, neither of which were occurring, they went off and started bothering other demonstrators who were now arriving and taking up position outside the object of their protests, the embassy.
WPC Pymont (whose lapel ID ‘BS 206’ was not related to the BS she was spouting), was telling people that if you hold a protest, you need to notify and get authority from the police. These cops knowledge of the ECHRA was depressingly woeful, and it’s something the Met should really sort out, as it’s a very basic and fundamental part of policing by consent in a democratic society.
A couple of diplomatic protection police turned up and thankfully made more sense, pointing out the need to protect the Embassy itself under the terms of the Vienna Convention, but otherwise seemingly relaxed about the protest outside.
The protest was called by Syriza activists in the UK (Syriza is the main Greek opposition party, a coalition of left, radical, and green groups trying to work together in a united front). It was also promoted and attended by UK socialists and anti-fascists. They were protesting about the killing of anti-fascist musician Pavlos Fyssas. He was murdered by a member of the neo-Nazi right-wing Golden Dawn party which has taken advantage of austerity cuts to promote its intolerant and hatred fuelled agenda and gain popularity in Greece. Greek protests over the murder were met with violence and repression by the State police.
Soon, the protest pen was abandoned to the newspaper vendors, and most of the demo (comprising around 200 people) was outside the embassy.
A small group of around twenty folk, also outside the pen, stood with their banner and chanted on the pavement directly opposite the embassy and separate from the main crowd. These were the KKE, the Greek Communists who are not part of the Syriza coalition.
The Syriza organiser introduced various speakers on a small megaphone, and the crowd was noisy but peaceful, while around half a dozen cops, and four DPG police guarded the embassy.
Just before 2pm, a bicycle sound system rode up, and between speakers, played some popular Greek anti-fascist tunes.
By now, the crowd was spilling out into the road a little, and a couple of constables were trying to direct people back on to the pavement.
This is when policing became problematic. To facilitate the protest and mitigate inconvenience to the public, what they easily could have done would be remove the barriers and allow pedestrians easy access along the pavement opposite and away from the embassy, and post an officer at each end to calm traffic which could have easily and safely negotiated the partly obstructed road at a slow pace.
But no, they just had to throw their weight around. An Inspector turned up, claimed there was ‘serious disruption to the life of the community’ and imposed Section 14 conditions. He informed the man from Syriza that he’d have to move the protest over to the pen (clearly too small for the numbers there), and that he’d be sending in the TSG to use force if necessary.
The organiser used his megaphone to try to achieve the required movement, but the TSG also moved in and threatened people into moving. Many moved off the pavement and part-way across the road, but there was clearly not enough room for everyone on the opposite pavement.
Then around 2.15, the pushing began, and there was an inevitable skirmish, a young girl was arrested, a man became involved and he was violently seized too. They were then both bundled into a police van and taken away.
Eventually, police realised they weren’t going to fit everyone on the pavement and they gave up.
So now, one pavement was still blocked, just a different one! And the noisy crowd was directly outside people’s private flats rather than outside the park gate and the embassy. And the road, which was previously open to traffic, was blocked at one end by police vans, while traffic coming up the other way were turned back by a constable.
All in, the police had managed to provoke two completely unnecessary arrests, and cause much greater disruption to the community than there was before, and impinge on everyone’s right to protest.
Despite all this, the crowd remained defiant, peaceful, and good-natured, and the sound system carried on pumping out tunes as numbers began to lessen over the next hour, until about 3.15 when there seemed a natural consensus to leave.
More pics and video at indyrikki.wordpress.com
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Good article
22.09.2013 15:40
A
Faces?
22.09.2013 17:02
If anyone witnessed these arrests please support your comrades by contacting
@
The issue of whether to blur faces
23.09.2013 13:00
Obviously the cops nicked this guy, so they know his identity, but the Nazis (ie Redwatch) DON'T know his identity so DON"T SHOW HIS FUCKING FACE
Leicester
blurred face response
25.09.2013 17:21
--------------
i've been posting on indymedia for more than a decade now, and i would prefer to think that i am generally very careful about what i post. i would certainly not post any incriminating photographs, and i would not post a photo of someone changing clothes or removing a mask etc who clearly prefers their own anonymity.
if i'm covering a direct action for a small group of people, i would always ask if everyone is ok with their images being posted, and i'd respect any reservations.
with larger protests it becomes more difficult of course. it's possible that i may end up posting images of people that would prefer not to be seen, so i would tend to rely on people ultimately taking responsibility for themselves in that situation, ie wearing disguise or masks.
for the embassy story, i selected about a dozen photos which appear on the blog version. for the indymedia version, i wanted to choose one photo that best summed up the story, and since everyone knows what a protest outside an embassy looks like, it seemed to me that the best photo was of the violent arrest of a peaceful protestor, as the main thrust of my story was about the fact there was no need for a section 14, that police provoked the arrests by unnecessarily moving people, and that there ended up being more 'disruption to the community' after the police op than there was before.
the person who was arrested was not masked, and had not been masked earlier, even though others at the protest were. given that, and given the fact that the photo showed police manhandling him, with no incriminating factors, i didn't feel there was anything to gain from anonymising him, especially given that he was surrounded by several more mainstream freelance NUJ phtographers who were also clicking away. (among the photos on my blog, there was also the arrest of a young woman - despite having a photo of her unmasked being bundled into the van, and closer images of her arrest, i chose to publish a longer view because in her case it was clear she preferred to keep her ID to herself - i wouldn't dream of posting the other ones).
looking through past arrest photos, i tend to hone in on handcuffs, backshots, police in the way of faces, etc, generally out of courtesy and respect.
twice recently, i have included faces in an arrest, and both times the people concerned were at no time masked or attempting to hide their identity, and in both cases, i felt the shots were visually powerful and conveyed a sense of police repression.
the comments above, and an email i received from some greek activists, have certainly made me think again and remind myself it's not always about the power of the shot, but that other factors of at the least courtesy, and possibly safety, are involved.
i haven't read any of the arguments about blurring on indymedia recently, so i can assure the poster above that i didn't publish this image "deliberately" in the sense you suggest. from what i remember about the arguments, there was never a resolution - different people have different views, and i've outlined my own absolute no-no rules at the start of this comment.
i can't promise i'll never put another face pic up again - it would depend on the individual circumstances and context, but i'll certainly give it a lot more thought and tend to avoid it more in future.
if anyone wants to post a link to a previous (sensible and unflamey) discussion of this topic, i'd be grateful.
rikki
e-mail:
rikkiindymedia(At)gmail[c0m]
Homepage:
indyrikki.wordpress.com
Be aware
25.09.2013 22:40
That photo has, since my complaint, been replaced with a blurred version
Leicester
correction about who called the demo
26.09.2013 12:43
abolition
@ rikki
26.09.2013 16:10
@
thanks
26.09.2013 21:54
@abolition - thanks very much for your correction. the man from Syriza was adamant it was his protest, and he was the one negotiating with police. i was certainly aware that there were plenty of other people there not associated with him, but not being a user of the evil fb empire, i didn't know what you've pointed out. it gives me a warm glow that the protest was called from the ground up, and although i can't change the article above, i'll certainly edit the version on my blog to reflect what you've pointed out. cheers.
@Leicester - your second comment seemed unnecessary - please read the first bit of my response - thanks for making it more clear though
rikki
e-mail:
rikkiindymedia(At)gmail[c0m]
Homepage:
indyrikki.wordpress.com