Demonstrations against the G8 at Evian

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Demonstrations against the G8 at Evian

East London Health Workers on Strike, Campaigning for a Living Wage

Court Case Criminalising Rights Activists

The following call was released by organisers of actions against the G8 at Evian

The G-8, which unites the world's seven richest countries in addition to Russia, will hold its next summit in France, at the town of Evian, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of June. Created in 1975 to informally discuss financial and economic question, this club of predominantly rich and dominant states reflects the development of a globalisation founded on the pursuit of profit and conformed to the narrow interests of multinational corporations. The recommendations of the G-8 are put into practice by international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank; these few countries are also the major shareholders of the World Trade Organisation.

The G-8, in effect, asserts its function as a kind of world government, a role for which the world's people never asked of it. The G-8 thus illegitimately imposes its will upon the world's order. The G-8 prescribes neo-liberal policies that accelerate the concentration of wealth, attack workers' rights, jeopardise employment, lower living conditions for the vast majority of the population, disrespect cultural differences, and harm the environment. While G-8 member countries refuse to seriously engage themselves in the fight against accounting fraud, money laundering, and offshore havens, the G-8, under the auspices of the fight against terrorism, attempts to justify war, militarism, and repression. The G-8 claims to combat world poverty, but its proposals for debt relief for poor countries have proven totally insufficient and are tied to unacceptable conditions. Furthermore, IMF policies continue to drive countries, like Argentina, into bankruptcy, market liberalisation under the aegis of the WTO each day proves itself more and more unfavourable to the countries of the southern hemisphere, and financial contributions to help in the struggle against AIDS, malaria, and other maladies are light years behind what is needed and what has been promised. G-8 member countries, finally, have taken no serious measures to protect the environment. In the past fifteen years, movements against the G-8 have multiplied. In Europe, demonstrations against the G-8 took place in 1989 in Paris, 1996 in Lyon, 1998 in Birmingham, and 1999 in Cologne. Tens of thousands of demonstrators have called for the cancellation of debt of poor countries, and in 2001 hundreds of thousands of people protested in Genoa in spite of the police repression that provoked the death of Carlo Giuliani.

This year, we are responsible for mobilizing ourselves in mass against the G-8 using a broad-based approach uniting citizens and activists from the local to the global level. Whether we be group or political party activists, union members, NGO workers, or, most importantly, simple citizens, we will be in the street united by our common demands, but respecting our differences, because our diversity is our strength. We will mobilize ourselves, together, for peace, against all wars or military interventions, notably in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the Ivory Coast, in Columbia or Chechnya, and against a western intervention in Iraq.

We will denounce the illegitimacy of the G-8 and we will demand that governments take immediate measures against the fall in living standards, against all forms of discrimination, especially those which affect women and homosexuals, against all inequality, and for the right to work and receive income, for a redistribution of wealth, for a total cancellation of third world debt, for the enforcement of every person's right to travel and live where he wishes as well as the access for all to the common goods of all humanity: water, the sea, the land, food, housing, education, culture, information, and access to health care and medication.

Support staff at Whipps Cross Hospital in East London took strike action on Wednesday and Thursday, May 28-29. The workers are employed by private contractor ISS Mediclean and Medirest. They are among the lowest paid workers and are demanding a living wage, and parity with pay and conditions of NHS colleagues. Staff at the East London hospitals of Homerton in Hackney and St Clements and Mile End are also part of this campaign.

Most of the workers are new to trade union organisation and have never taken part in industrial action before. They include hospital cleaners, porters, caterers, transport, security and sores workers. These workers earn as little as £4.42 per hour with inadequate sick pay and no pension rights. They receive no enhanced pay for overtime working and inferior conditions to their NHS colleagues doing the same jobs.

Mostly women, working upwards of seventy hours per week, often with two or three jobs, these workers have already overcome much including fear, language and reading difficulties, to arrive at up to ninety six percent majority for strike action.

The strikers staged a militant demonstration at the main gates of Whipps Cross Hospital on Wednesday with banners, children, branch members, and friends all participating. The picket line gained much support from the local community.

In a solidarity fund appeal, Len Hockey, the Unison Joint Branch Secretary of Waltham Forest Health Branch, writes that Unison’s East End health branches, in organising the most exploited and oppressed layers in society, are transforming the East London labour movement and advancing their aim of a fully funded and resourced NHS, and appeals to Unison branches and the wider movement for support and solidarity.

WDIE offers its militant support to the health support workers in their initiatives to win their demands, and wishes them success in their campaign.

The case against six people arrested and charged under so-called "anti-terrorism" legislation continued in Southwark Crown Court on May 15.

The Terrorism Act 2000 was used to authorise a raid on the homes of these men and women in the early hours of the morning and drag them from their beds for interrogation. They were then detained and questioned for a further seven days without being charged with any offence. The six people have been active in support of the struggle in defence of human rights in Turkey. The Terrorism Act 2000 gives legislative sanction to this criminalisation of those who are engaged in legitimate political activity. The six people were charged under the Act with membership of and fundraising for a proscribed organisation.

The Campaign against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) reports that after their arrests in December last year, and a week in detention, all six defendants attained bail and have been out on bail ever since. Within the last six months the case has progressed extremely slowly. The defendants had to appear at Bow Street Magistrates almost on a monthly basis whilst they were waiting for the police and prosecution to serve their papers. This was supposed to have taken four weeks but in the end took four months. After the papers were served in April the magistrates decided that the case should now progress through the Crown Court. The prosecution wanted the case to be heard at the Old Bailey, whereas the defence argued that the case was not of a serious enough nature to be heard there to which the judge agreed. A decision was then made to pass the case to Southwark Crown Court.

Southwark Crown Court are now claiming that there are not enough senior judges to hear the case there and claim that they would not be able to hear the case until April 2004, which would be 18 months after the arrests. The courts have given the fact that the defendants are out on bail as a reason why they are not a priority.

When their trial actually takes place it is likely to last up to six weeks, Southwark Crown Court claim that they could only accommodate a trial this year if it was to last for three weeks.

The conclusion of the hearing on May 15 was that the defendants have to attend court again on Wednesday June 11 but at the moment they do not know which court it will be. The appearance on May 15 lasted for no more than five minutes and the activists still have not had the chance to put a plea.

WDIE condemns the criminalisation of those engaged in the struggle of defence of rights. All such "anti-terrorism" legislation is an attack on the right to conscience and must be repealed.