Stories from Guantanamo: access our new video library for free this Human Rights Day

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/guantanamobaylibrary

Spectacle is launching a new library of films on Vimeo on demand. This will allow viewers to rent all of our films relating to Guantanamo Bay and people’s advocacy work for those imprisoned there without trial. The collection includes the films Outside the Law: Stories From Guantanamo and Shaker Aamer: A Decade Of Injustice as well as short films on the various groups campaigning for Shaker’s release and never before seen interviews with politicians and campaigners including John MacDonald and Sadiq Khan. The library will be free to access for one month starting on the 6th of December to mark Human Rights Day (10th Dec).

VIEW THE FILMS HERE with promo code: HR21Guan

After 20 years of protracted conflict and attempted nation building in Afghanistan, the Taliban are back in the seat of government. Politicians in the UK and America are scrambling to justify these 20 years: the lives lost and billions spent. In the midst of these speeches on noble intentions it is important to look back at the war on terror and remember the basis on which this war was waged.

It was a moment when the USA and its allies in NATO decided that human rights and habeas corpus were not in fact universal principles and did not apply to anyone deemed an “enemy combatant”. Moazzam Begg (a former detainee of Guantanamo Bay) summed up this thinking in a Q&A after a screening of Stories from Guantanamo with the George Orwell Quote: “we are all equal but some are more equal than others”.  Everything was justifiable in the name of stamping out global terrorism.  Innocent men from around the world were sent, not just to Guantanamo, but also Bagram prison in Afghanistan and other “black site” secret prisons, to be tortured and interrogated.  

Spectacle has documented the story of the Guantánamo Bay Detention Centre and the wider context of extraordinary rendition and secret prisons that were central to Bush and Blair’s War On Terror in two separate films, available together here for the first time along with extras and archive materials.

Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” provides a powerful rebuke to those who believe that Guantánamo holds “the worst of the worst” and that the Bush administration was justified in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by holding men neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects with habeas corpus rights, but as “illegal enemy combatants” with no rights whatsoever.

The film is based around interviews with former prisoners including Moazzam Begg and Omar Deghayes in his first major onscreen interview. The film also contains interviews with lawyers for the prisoners, journalist and author Andy Worthington, Guantánamo’s former Muslim chaplain James Yee, a London-based Imam, and the British human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce.

“Outside the Law is a powerful film that has helped ensure that Guantánamo and the men unlawfully held there have not been forgotten”.

Kate Allen , director Amnesty International UK

Shaker Aamer: A Decade of Injustice

This film was made to mark the 10th anniversary of Shaker Aamer’s detention in Guantanamo Bay.

Shaker Aamer was one of the 171 men still held in detention in Guantanamo Bay on the camp’s 10th anniversary. Despite never having had a trial, having been approved for release twice, and there being a large campaign supporting him, Shaker remained in detention until 2015.

During the 13+ years that Shaker Aamer was incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, he was never charged, and he has never denied his innocence. He has continuously lobbied for the welfare of other Guantanamo inmates from within the system. Many believe that this, and his potential as a witness to U.S. human rights abuses, are the reasons he remained captive for so long.

Shaker Aamer was finally released from prison on 30th October 2015.

Access the library in full HERE and use promo code: HR21Guan.

Lost video “Aug 13” on “Battle of Lewisham 1977” found in Spectacle Archive

Late July 2017, just a few weeks before the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Lewisham Spectacle found the “lost” video of the anti-fascist film “Aug 13: What Happened” in its extensive and unique video archive. The Spectacle video archive contains over 3000 hours of video on social justice, urbanism, human rights, housing, anti-racism, alternative and radical media from 1977 to the present day. Much of the late 1970s and 1980s content was shot in and around East London which was a very different place then.

The film “Aug 13” was found, high on a shelf, among a group of U-Matic tapes Despite TV had gathered for a film, never finished, for the 50th Anniversary of the 1936 Battle of Cable Street when the Jewish community of East London and its anti-fascist allies blocked the streets in order to prevent Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists marching through.

August 13 1977 the Battle of Lewisham from Spectacle Media on Vimeo.

The film depicts the infamous events of 13 August 1977, the so called Battle of Lewisham, when the far-right National Front (NF)  attempted to march through South East London which led to clashes with anti-fascist groups, and later between demonstrators and the police. The footage shows the first time police deployed riot gear on the UK mainland and provides vital evidence about the demonstration and its aftermath in which over 100 people were injured.

With testimony from eyewitnesses varying, and often contradicting official reports, the battle has become a contested historical event. The film was shot by volunteers connected to the Albany Video project in Deptford. This version was restored just in time for the anniversary and is now included in the London Community Video Archive

Nearly forty years later to the day, 12 August 2017, there was the “Charlottesville incident” a counter demonstration against a White Supremacist and Neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville , Virginia, USA. Lessons from the past might help in the fight against a new virulent form of Fascism taking a grip particularly in the USA, UK and Europe.

You might also be interested in our  documentary  film

22nd August will also be the 26th anniversary of the Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots. Check out our participatory investigative feature length documentary “The Truth Lies in Rostock

The Truth Lies in Rostock from Spectacle Media on Vimeo.

August 1992 Lichtenhagen estate, Rostock, former East Germany. Police withdraw as fascists petrol bomb a refugee centre and the home of Vietnamese guest workers while 3000 spectators stood by and clapped.

Using material filmed from inside the attacked houses and interviews with anti-fascists, the Vietnamese guest workers, police, bureaucrats, neo-nazis and residents, a story of political collusion and fear unfolds.

“Aug 13” is just one of the many lost and forgotten gems to be found in the Spectacle Archive. We are always interested to explore collaborative projects based on our archives.

To find out more about our archive, which also includes 100s of original paper documents regarding independent media 1977-2000 please ontact archive@spectacle.co.uk to find out more or visit Spectacle Archive

 

 

Who are Battersea Power Station co-owners Sime Darby?

Producing palm oil is already a bad thing on its own (see our previous blog ), but Malaysia-based multinational conglomerate Sime Darby (a.k.a co-owner of the Battersea Power Station) also violates numerous contracts and even acts in an illegal way, according to Friends of the Earth.

Continue reading for a summary on Darby’s careless actions, all based on reports by Friends of the Earth, which are attached at the bottom of this article.

sime-darby-logo

The multinational conglomerate is developing palm oil plantations in Liberia, swallowing up farmlands and forests used by local communities to sustain their livelihoods. The contracts for land concessions signed by Sime Darby and the Liberian government violate several Liberian laws and regulations as exposed by a government agency report released a few months ago. They also violate several human rights principles in conventions ratified by the Liberian government as well as principles enshrined in Liberian Law.

Sime Darby’s plantations in the Ketapang district in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, are unlikely to achieve RSPO certification in the near future. The company has allegedly illegally deforested protected forest at Ketapang and is producing palm oil on this land. Sime Darby’s 100 – per – cent owned subsidiary PT BAL has cleared 2,600 ha of concessions that overlap with Protected Forest. This is what a Forestry Department team discovered in 2003.  Another wholly-owned subsidiary, called PT SNP, has a 1300 ha concession that overlaps protected forest. Parts of this have again been cleared and planted without permission. Indonesia was one of their victims as well. More than 2 million hectares of forest, including protected forest and conservation areas, have been illegally converted to palm oil plantations.

The Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (LEITI) has found that contract award process between Sime Darby and the Liberian government did not comply with local land laws, failed to conduct public consultations or produce due diligence reports as required by Liberian rules.

To sum up some of Sime Darby’s deeds, which highly affect the local communities in Liberia:

– No compensation has been paid to communities for land taken over by the company
– Forest areas used for various cultural practices had also been destroyed and planted with oil palm
-Sime Darby operations could lead to a loss of biodiversity, particularly the Upper Guinean Forest Ecosystem, which includes globally endangered and vulnerable bird species
-There could be land clearance of substantial areas of closed forest (more than 40 per cent tree cover) resulting in reductions in carbon storage and sequestration capacity
– There are risks of loss of livelihoods, food insecurity and the potential for chronic poverty
– Increased risk of conflict and rural to urban migration
– Increase in gender inequalities

According to Sime Darby’s own High Conservation Value Assessment report, one of the concession areas (Garwula District, Grand Cape Mount County) is comprised of
wetlands, agricultural lands, and mainly intact natural forested areas. This area houses a variety of animal species including Water Chevrotain and African Buffalo, both of which are protected under Liberian laws. Various species of forest and lowland birds, as well as reptiles including crocodiles are found in the area as well. Another concession area (Bopolu District,Gbarpolu County) also has significant forest cover.

To give you a list of violated Liberian regulations:

-By having no protection for communities’ rights in respect of customary land and natural resources;
-By not guaranteeing the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC);
-By allowing involuntary resettlement of communities if they are deemed to impede the companies’ activities;
-By allowing the degradation of food security by not mandating that the company find alternative nutrition sources for community members who lose farmland to the plantations.

tree

As if Sime Darby has not caused enough harm already, local communities accuse them of violating their human rights as well, in a way of:

-Providing inadequate information about the concession areas;
-Not providing communities copies of the concession agreement;
-Giving little or no time to consider their response;
-Providing inadequate or no compensation;
-Not giving communities the opportunity to say ‘no’.

After these findings, the Friends of the Earth have given Sime Darby the following demands:

– The concession agreements or contracts must be renegotiated in order to enshrine the responsibility to conduct FPIC negotiations, to invalidate the resettlement clause, and acknowledge customary community land rights regarding the concession land;
– Only after the communities have given their free, prior and informed consent can the company operate on their land;
– Communities should not be displaced against their will by the activities of Sime Darby;
– All community members should benefit from the plantations and the benefits shall be laid out clearly to the communities before they enter into any agreement;
– Employment rights must be respected;
– Compensation rates must be agreed with the communities before entering into any contractual agreement;
– No further deforestation and other environmental degradation should take place by Sime Darby in any of the concession areas.

But the following terrifying quote from Sime Darby Plantation managing director Datuk Azhar Abdul Hamidi shows that they’re not taking these demands very seriously:

”Later on, when the opportunity arises, we may open estates in Brazil or in any South American country near the equator where oil palm grows well.”

Sime Darby’s expansion into Liberia is part of the company’s ambition to reach 1 million hectares of plantation land in the next five years. This would very nearly double its current palm oil plantations area and would inevitably involve large scale deforestation to create new land. But unfortunately, it is not alone. IOI and Cargill, are also expanding their operations into new land including forest. Let’s hope these ’’opportunities’’ won’t arise at all.

The most incredible part of the story is that European banks, pension funds and private equity funds have given out loans to Sime Darby with a total value of 280 million
euro and assisted with issuing new bonds with a total value of 250 million euro. The company is highly supported in their destruction, so it seems.

Furthermore, the largest European shareholders of Sime Darby are the Norwegian Government Pension Fund – Global, the British asset manager Schroder Investment Management, the Dutch pension fund Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn (PfZW) and the German Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank is also the largest European bondholder together with AXA Group (France). HSBC and Standard Chartered (both from the United Kingdom) are the only European financial institutions that have assisted Sime Darby to issue new bonds.

To conclude with, EU biofuels targets are driving deforestation of tropical rainforests as Sime Darby’s operations in Indonesia and Liberia reveal. They will continue to expand elsewhere to meet the extra demand for palm oil, therefore causing indirect greenhouse gas emissions. The EU must account for the emissions caused by the new demand stemming from its targets.

See the full PDF’s on this, reports by Friends of the Earth.
Palm_oil_driving_deforestation_Aug_2010 Sime_Darby_and_land_grabs_in_Liberia_June_2013

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Data Leak Reveals the Truth About Palm Oil

Owners of Battersea Power Station,  Palm Oil giants Sime Darby, want to build a bio-fuel power station at the site to power the massive development. To side step criticism they claim not have decided what bio-fuel it will use ( yeah right. Maybe Palm Oil?)

This blog has been sourced from an article by David Carrington, for The Guardian.     Click here if you would prefer to view the full article.

A new data leak has revealed how certain bio-fuels can have a worse impact upon the environment then fossil fuels. Although some bio-fuels can be advantageous in preventing climate change, others such as palm oil are quite the opposite due to the large carbon footprint that they generate.

In distinguishing the good bio-fuels from the bad ones it is also important to account for factors such as deforestation and other man made sources of pollution that are involved in harvesting bio-fuels.

A diagram displaying the individual carbon footprint of bio-fuels in comparison to that of crude oil from tar sands, puts Palm oil just beneath that of the crude oil:

Biofuels

Second generation fuels (SG), particularly those that are land-using such as Biodiesel and Ethanol produce the least CO2. While sugar cane and corn maize are thankfully less harmful then crude oil, however their carbon footprint could still be considered a cause for concern.

Recently, the US environmental protection agency stated that Palm oil failed to meet the US requirement of emitting a minimum  of 20% less carbon then the diesel produced from crude oil. Furthermore, bio-fuels campaigner Robbie Blake for Friends of the Earth Europe further condemned the use of Palm Oil (speaking to David Carrington):

“It’s getting quite indisputable that the use of soy or palm oil to fuel our cars is even dirtier than conventional fossil fuels. Forests in Asia and South America are being destroyed by the expansion of plantations to meet the European market. It’s a delusion for politicians to think that biodiesel will solve climate change.”

An important factor that helps assess how beneficial or environmentally unfriendly bio-fuels are is sourced from research into more sustainably advancements, with the latest examples in sourcing low carbon bio-fuel come from seaweed and algae.

An EU target has been made to ensure transport fuels incorporate 10% of bio-fuels by 2020. However the production of certain bio-fuels has been named ‘unethical’ in relation to the environment and to human rights. Research groups meanwhile have branded it ‘immoral’ to not look for an alternative to using fossil fuels.

For more information on this topic view the full article here, or try these related links:

Issues surrounding the production of second generation fuels, how the EU brands fuel sustainability, other recent studies into bio-fuel carbon footprints.

https://www.facebook.com/BatterseaAgainstBiofuels

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2013/battersea-biofuels/

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Mark Saunders talks at INURA 2012

 

 

Check out a recording of Mark Saunders talking at the 2012 conference for International Network for Urban Research and Action (INURA).

In the presentation Mark, describes strategies of running an independent media company with an agenda for social justice and human rights.

He also discusses his methods of participatory media, people involved in a story being behind a camera and how this technique was particularly effective in his film ‘The Truth Lies in Rostock‘. Mark references his other projects as well as the documentary he is currently working on called ‘Bookchin on Bookchin‘. A clip of this film is shown at the end, with Murray Bookchin an American social ecologist, philosopher and anarchist describing his thoughts about society.

http://inura2012tallinn.wordpress.com/programme/

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Plans to reveal yet another statue.

The Camden New Journal yesterday uncovered plans to erect a statue of Christ the Redeemer on Primrose Hill. The statue will be a tribute to the one overlooking Rio de Janeiro, to celebrate passing on the torch (pun begrudgingly intended) to Brazil for 2016.

The Brazilian government would fund the project, and a planning consultancy based in London has been employed by Brazil’s tourist agency to hold a public meeting to display the designs before applications for planning permission are submitted.

The Camden-based design company See Me, Hear Me, Feel Me did not want to discuss the plans, and the Brazilian government was unavailable for comment, but Primrose Hill Lib Dem councillor Chris Naylor said he wasn’t sure a 30ft statue of Christ with his arms outstretched was quite what the area needed.

Other statues to celebrate the Olympics have been erected around Britain, often to the displeasure of residents. The ‘Jurassic Stones’ statue, by Richard Harris, has been greeted with horror by residents of Weymouth, Dorset. The Stones’ £335,000 bill pales in comparison to the £19m spent on Anish Kapoor’s ‘ArcelorMittal Orbit’, on site in Stratford.

 

Many people question why so much money is being spent on statues to celebrate the Olympics, and whether it is appropriate in the current economic climate. The term ‘Legacy’ has always been used to describe the impact of mega-events like the Games: urban development, social, economic and cultural changes are words often thrown around in relation to the Legacy. However, the term has been re-appropriated by critics of the Games and become somewhat of a joke. The Legacy that does seem to be taking shape is symbolised in the statues cropping up around the country – abstracted, distorted, and expensive.

The real Olympic Legacy will be towering debt.

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EU to ban film on victims of rape in Afghanistan

London based film-maker, Clementine Malpas, has been threatened with legal action by the European Union after making a documentary that exposed the abuse of women in Afghanistan.

The EU hired  Ms Malpas, 30, to highlight the life of battered wives and rape victims convicted of moral crimes by anti-female Afghan courts. But only 24 hours before the film was due to be delivered, EU officials stated that they did not want to “upset relations with the justice institutions” in Afghanistan.

Ms Malpas is now accused of breaching her contract after breaching her contract after claims the film was screened for outside viewers.


She obtained written consent to film Gulnaz, 19, who was jailed for 12 years for adultery after being raped, and Farida, 26, also jailed for adultery after fleeing her abusive husband. Both women risked their personal safety to speak up and the EU insists that it is protecting them by hiding their identities.

An EU spokesman said: “The woman and their families must be protected, which means their identities can under no circumstances be revealed. The film in its current state does not conceal the persons in question.”

Ms Malpas, who has produced a number of human rights films in Africa, told the London Evening Standard: “It is the women’s choice to tell their stories and I admire their clever-eyed courage. It is not for us to veto their votes.”

These women are well aware of the fact that they’re putting their own and their families’ lives at risk in order to tell their horror stories. They have made up their mind, so who are the EU to dictate what they’re allowed to say? These women’s bravery should be applauded – not shut down.

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Yvonne Ridley interviews now published

A series of interviews with British journalist, broadcaster and human rights activist, Yvonne Ridley has now been published on the Spectacle website.

To watch them, please visit our Guantánamo archive pages.


Please note that these interviews were conducted during a screening, hence the occasional background noise.

Order Spectacle’s DVD Outside The Law: Stories from Guantánamo

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New Olympic legacy website: London-Rio: Olympic Cities

Mega Event Cities

London-Rio: Olympic Cities

“Cities across the globe are using mega events to catalyse urban development and social, economic and cultural change. Here we present insights and analysis of these events, examining their impact upon city-building and exploring their contribution to the design and shaping of place.

Our research is policy focused and practical. Our approach is focused upon the social impacts and legacies of mega events. We use interdisciplinary analysis to discover new ways of comparing and thinking about the mega event city.

We are interested in receiving comments on the site and suggestions for relevant material or links to be placed on it. The site will be dedicated primarily to housing academic work on the social legacies of mega events, particularly those referring to London 2012 or Rio 2016. We would also welcome links to our site being placed in sites addressing similar themes.”

For other Olympic links and Spectacle’s video archive

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