A year after protesters sent a British security firm’s annual general meeting into chaos, activists confirm that they plan to target this year’s G4S shareholder meeting, scheduled for 4 June at London’s Excel Centre.
Stop G4S, a network that has demonstrated against the company in the past, announced the plans Monday on its website. Participants will include supporters of migrants’ and prisoners’ rights, as well as Palestine solidarity activists.
News of the plans for the shareholder meeting come after protests were held in countries across the world in March for the “Hares Boys”.
The five teenagers have been held in a G4S-secured prison for adults for more than two years on attempted murder charges. The only proof against them are their confessions which supporters say were taken under duress in prison.
The world’s largest security firm and second-biggest private employer, G4S has faced boisterous protests for years for providing security systems and other services to Israeli prisons and detention centres, including facilities in which human rights groups have documented torture and poor treatment of Palestinian prisoners, including children.
Since an official campaign was launched against the company in 2012, the company has lost public, university and institutional contracts and seen stockholders, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the United Methodist Church, divest.
South African anti-apartheid stalwarts Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Ahmed Kathrada, joined by international lawyers, politicians and actors, wrote a public letter calling on G4S to cut its ties with Israel.
Most recently, Palestine solidarity activists marked Palestinian Prisoners’ Day on 17 April by protesting the company in Glasgow and Manchester, as well as invading its headquarters in London.
Simultaneously, BDS activists in South Africa announced that more than 20 companies in the country had ended their contracts with G4S.“G4S tells us it is ‘securing our world’,” Diana Neslen of Stop G4S, which organised the London protest, told Middle East Eye. “On the contrary, G4S is securing Israel’s apartheid.”
http://redress-newsbites.tumblr.com/post/118437954819/g4s-condemned-for-role-in-israeli-prisoners
No comments:
Post a Comment