McGuinness tells Blair He Cannot Hold Electorate to Ransom

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

McGuinness tells Blair He Cannot Hold Electorate to Ransom

Britain and US Try to Weaken UN Treaty on Cluster Bombs

No Money fr Uribe's War Against the Colombian People

Participate in Forthcoming Events!

Speaking at a Republican Commemoration in Derry on June 29, Sinn Féin Chief Negotiator, Martin McGuinness, referred to the diktat of the British government cancelling the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Addressing his remarks to Tony Blair and the British government, he said:

"The decision to cancel the elections was wrong, the reason given for cancelling the elections was wrong and the precondition that before any election can be held the indicators must point to a result acceptable to a British government is unacceptable. Tony Blair cannot hold Irish voters to ransom.

"If the electorate decides to make Sinn Féin the largest party in the North then Tony Blair will just have to accept that. If the electorate wants to make the DUP the largest party in the North then Tony Blair will just have to accept that also. It is not the remit of a British Prime Minister to tell Irish people whom they must vote for. It will be up to the parties given sufficient mandates by the electorate to form an Executive to find a way to resolve any difficulties that arise.

"The only thing that Tony Blair achieved by his intervention in the electoral process in the North was to guarantee that the parties would not be given the opportunity to even attempt to form an Executive. Tony Blair must give an assurance that there will be no further interference in the electoral process and that the elections will proceed in the autumn without any preconditions. The people are entitled to have their say."

WDIE affirms its support for this stand of the Republican Movement, and condemns Tony Blair and the government for once more acting to dictate to the people of the north of Ireland whether or not they should be able to control their own affairs. It is instructive that the same British troops which patrolled the streets of the north of Ireland are now patrolling the streets of Basra and elsewhere in Iraq. It has also long been the case that the methods of suppression, use of agents provocateur, low intensity operations and so on have been tried first in the Ireland as a testing ground for their use in Britain itself. The war against Irish "terrorism" has been a forerunner of the "war against terrorism" waged by Blair and Bush today. The British government cannot be surprised that the troops in Iraq are no more welcomed as "liberators" than were British troops in northern Ireland welcomed as protectors of "civil rights".

These crimes of the British government besmirch and expose the fraudulence of the democratic process in Britain itself. This is the growing consciousness of the people as they draw the conclusions over Tony Blair’s determination to go to war against Iraq against the people’s will.

The British working class and people must demand that the British government end all intervention and interference in Ireland. They must draw the conclusion that Tony Blair has no more respect for the people as decision-makers in England, Scotland and Wales than he has in Ireland or Iraq.

Britain and the United States are attempting to weaken the provisions of an international treaty requiring belligerents to clear up unexploded cluster bombs after the end of any conflict, according to the London-based group Landmine Action. Talks have been ongoing in Geneva to reach consensus on a protocol under the United Nations convention on conventional weapons. Draft proposals would oblige countries to pay for the safe destruction of cluster bombs they had used during a war.

Landmine Action director Richard Lloyd said that the British delegation is arguing in favour of weaker language in certain key articles of the treaty, while Washington's delegation is even more resistant to calls for legal responsibility. Landmine Action is one of the main groups campaigning on the issue, and has estimated that US and British forces used around 300,000 cluster bomb sub-munitions, or "bomblets", during the invasion of Iraq, and that a significant number failed to explode. UN agencies have estimated that hundreds of Iraqi children have been killed or injured since the end of the fighting from picking up unexploded shells and bomblets.

The US military has known about the dangers of the unexploded bomblets for decades, since the Vietnam War, when Viet Cong fighters used the devices as land mines against the US forces that fired them by the millions. In the three decades since, the duds have killed thousands in Laos, says the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Red Cross, human rights groups and the European Parliament have campaigned to ban cluster-weapon use until countries agree to improve grenade reliability, avoid firing them in populated areas and regulate their cleanup.

Statement of Colombia Solidarity Campaign and others, June 19, 2003

For more info contact, CSC at PO Box 8446, London N17 6NZ. e-mail colombia_sc@hotmail.com or telephone 07743 743041

Tony Blair is convening a meeting on 10^th July of EU states, the US, World Bank and IMF. The title of the meeting is "London Meeting on International Support for Colombia", but its actual purpose is to raise support for the government of Álvaro Uribe Vélez, which presides over the worst human rights abuses in the western hemisphere. We call for no aid go to Uribe's repressive regime and instead urge direct international solidarity with the Colombian people.

VIGIL 4pm - 7pm Wednesday 9^th July

PICKET from 2pm with RALLY 6pm - 8pm Thursday 10^th July

both in Whitehall, opposite Downing Street, London SW1

Why does Uribe need more aid? The Colombian authorities count on the support of the USA through Plan Colombia and the Andean Regional Initiative to pursue their policy of war against the people. Colombia is already the second biggest recipient of US military aid in the world, and is home to thousands of US troops and private military personnel. It has just been revealed that the Pentagon spent $150 million in 2002 on private contract operations involving 300 US mercenaries in Colombia. Under the pretext of fighting terrorism, Uribe is seeking international assistance, while at the same time he seeks to formalise his relations with paramilitary groups, offering them pardons for drug trafficking and crimes against humanity, crimes that have enjoyed the most complete official impunity in the country’s history, in their war against the Colombian people and their social organisations.

More aid to Uribe will worsen the human rights situation. There are 3 million displaced people, forced from their land by paramilitary violence, and twice this number have fled the country. There are 8,000 politically motivated assassinations every year, the UN estimates that the state and their paramilitary allies are responsible for more than 80% of them. The vast majority of the victims are unarmed civilians. Last year 184 trade unionists were assassinated. Human rights defenders, women’s organisations, black and indigenous groups are also singled out by paramilitary violence.

Violations are especially acute in the oil rich department of Arauca, where for the last two months three hundred Guahíbo indigenous people have occupied the Central Catholic Church in Saravena. They fled their homes as a result of attacks committed by the Nava Pardo Battalion of the 18th Brigade of the National Army. On 31^st December soldiers wearing AUC armbands came to their village in Tame. They killed a man and took off his two-year-old daughter. They raped four females aged 11, 12, 15 and 16 years old. Omaira Fernández was pregnant. Then, as human rights workers report, "the people had to look on horrified as the supposed 'paramilitaries' opened up her womb, took out the foetus, sliced it up, put the pieces in a plastic bag and threw them into the river along with the mother". Tame lies between three zones being taken over by US corporation Occidental, the Spanish multinational Repsol, and BP whose expanding Casanare operation is moving towards Tame.

Uribe's Colombia - a heavy hand on the poor but a kind heart for the multinationals. Multinational companies, drug traffickers, land owners and their paramilitary allies, all with the blessing of Uribe’s government, expand their ownership of the most important land, the natural resources and biodiversity which historically has been the property of indigenous, black and peasant farmer communities. The army and paramilitaries force these people from the land through terror, for the benefit of projects such as the Atrato-Truando interoceanic canal and the search for oil and other minerals. Companies such as BP, Anglo American and Occidental, are responsible not only for a massive lobby of the US Congress for war in Colombia, but stand accused of profiting from the severest human rights violations and abuses.

Contrary to EU policy, fumigations with glysophate continue across the country, causing irreversible environmental damage to land and river systems, and further deepening the crisis of displacement. The so-called "zones of rehabilitation and consolidation" are nothing more than areas of military dictatorship, where all civil rights have been replaced by military rule. Travel restrictions and curfews have been introduced, along with press censorship and arbitrary detentions of the social and political leaders. State and para-state violence is greater than ever before in these zones.

Where will any assistance to Uribe end up? In strengthening repressive State organisations and corruption. The government of Alvaro Uribe seeks further economic assistance for Plan Colombia and its project of "Democratic Security" and has turned to the European Union, and to Jose Maria Aznar and Tony Blair, the unconditional allies of George Bush. Of particular concern is Uribe's own and many of his cronies' well documented links to drug trafficking and to paramilitary terrorism. The recently created "campesino soldier" network is a national version of the Convivir, the legalised paramilitary groups set up and supported by the current President when he was governor of Antioquia. The Convivir were responsible for thousands of selected assassinations and terrorising civilian society until they were finally outlawed by the Constitutional Court. Today, well known, self confessed paramilitaries are being transferred to the "campesino soldier" networks. The creation of a 1 million strong informers network, that stretches to Colombian communities abroad is undermining the very social fabric of the country, leading to social breakdown, mistrust, and widely reported abuses by the military, and is further involving the civilian population in Colombia’s internal conflict.

We call for international solidarity with the Colombian people. It is important to widen ties of solidarity with international organisations to denounce events in Colombia, and to prevent funds from the European Union supporting the war that Alvaro Uribe has declared on his own people in support of national and international capital. And to impose projects such as the FTAA that threatens to impose even more suffering and exploitation on the people of Latin America.

The Colombian people understand the need for international solidarity as one of the many forms of struggle against Uribe’s repressive and neo-liberal policies, summed up by his referendum to legitimise his own rule, restrict political and social rights and to conform to the IMF plan for privatisation and higher taxes. The regressive reforms and labour flexibility that Uribe has imposed are of particular concern, affecting both public and private workers such as judges, teachers in schools and universities, public service workers at Emcali, Empresas Publicas de Medellin, Telecom, Ecopetrol and metal workers. Their labour, social and political rights are disappearing and their leaders are persecuted, imprisoned, murdered or disappeared as a consequence of the criminalisation of social protest.

The justified aspiration of the Colombian people for peace and social justice will not be achieved through increased military intervention and internal repression, but through dialogue, negotiation, and participation of broad sectors of the population. This would allow for a true examination of the underlying socio-economic and political causes that give rise to the contemporary conflict. The government of Alvaro Uribe Velez seeks to obscure these issues by hiding behind the language of the ‘war on drugs and terror’, and the International Community must not allow itself to be fooled into supporting policies that will only lead to further misery and bloodshed.

No More War for Oil, Mr Blair!

No Aid to Uribe Velez!

Uribe Velez - Weapon of Mass Destruction!

Protest Against the London Meeting to support Uribe!

 

Campaign Against the Arms Trade

Colombian Refugee Association

Colombia Solidarity Campaign

International Centre for Trade Union Rights

Latin America Solidarity Collective Against US Intervention in Colombia

Latin American Workers Association

London, 19^th June 2003

EVENTS JULY


Monday 7 July, 7.30pm
Public Meeting with Martin McGuinness
Democracy denied in Ireland. Voting - a right not a privilege
Speaker: Martin McGuinness MP (Sinn Fein chief negotiator)
Following the cancellation of the Assembly elections by the British government, Sinn Fein¹s chief negotiator will address the key next steps in the peace process and implementing the Good Friday agreement.
Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, SOAS, Thornhaugh St, WC1
Nearest tube: Russell Square

Monday 14 July, 7pm to 9pm
North Korea: Is there a threat?
Seminar organised by Labour CND
Hosted by Jeremy Corbyn MP, with Keith Bennett, former editor of Asian Times
Committee Room 9, House of Commons, SW1 (nearest tube Westminster)
For further information, please email: carol@carol50.freeserve.co.uk

Wednesday, 23 July, 7.30pm
The Youth Taking Control of their Future
Discussion organised by the London Political Forum
Marx House, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1
For further information, please email: londonpf2003@yahoo.co.uk

Tuesday 1 July, 8pm
A reception with the Bloody Sunday Relatives
An opportunity for the families to extend their thanks to all those who have supported the campaign, both during the recent phase of the inquiry and indeed all those who have supported their campaign over the last 31 years to establish the truth about the events of that awful day.
Live music from Celtic Balladeers and others. Free admission
Mcnamara Hall, London Irish Centre, 52 Camden Square, Camden, NW1
Nearest tube: Camden Town, overground: Camden Road or Buses 29 &253

Tuesday 1 July
America and Imperial Power: Informal discussion group
Primrose League is a diverse group of professionals who meet on the third Tuesday of the month in north-west London to engage in lively debate on questions about the society we live in.
Please email: primrose_league@yahoo.co.uk or tel: 020 7449 9167

Wednesday 2 July, 6.30pm for 7pm
CAABU film presentation - Matzpen: The Israeli Socialist Organisation
A film by Eran Torbiner
Brunei Gallery, SOAS, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, WC1H 0XG
Nearest tube: Russell Square
For further information contact Matthew Jackson: email: jacksonm@caabu.org or phone 020 7832 1310

Thursday 3 July, 7.30pm
Public meeting: The media and the war
Ian Henshall (chair of INK - trade association for the UK¹s alternative print media) and Rowland Morgan (Green Party press officer and columnist  on the Guardian and Independent) will be speaking on how the corporate media reported the Iraq war and what we can do about the reporting of the occupation of Iraq and the next war., Marchmont Centre, 62 Marchmont Street, WC1 (Russell Square tube)

Friday 4 - Sunday 6 July
Proposal of summoning to the II MedSF International Assembly in Naples
For further information email: fsmed@fsmed.info

Friday 11 July, 9am - 3pm
Protect the Refugee Child - Secure a just future for all
National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaign (NCADC) Conference
South Aston Community Association Centre, 2 Tower Rd, Aston, Birmingham
For further information: ncadc@ncadc,org.uk
http://www.ncadc.org.uk

Friday 11 July
Tell the UK Government: Clear up your deadly litter.
Day of action in London
There are more than ten thousand unexploded cluster bomblets in Iraq. One cluster bomb drops around 200 bomblets over a wide area, many of which (at least 5 %) do not explode on impact. Campaign (non-violently) against the use of cluster bombs by coalition forces, and to show the British
Meet at 10 am in Parliament Square.
For more information, contact Kathryn Amos. Mobile: 07803 161723, landline phone (answer phone) 01603 493091, or email k.j.amos@uea.ac.uk.

Sunday 13 to Sunday 20 July
Cyprus Week Festival
This year Cyprus Week Festival aims to celebrate the historical treaty of the Republic of Cyprus with the European Union and the recent free movement in the occupied part of Cyprus which may still heal 29 years division of the Island.
Theatro Technis: http://www.theatrotechnis.com

Sunday 13 July
Kurdish chain protest from Trafalgar Square to Parliament Square
General Amnesty and peace and democracy in Turkey for the Kurds
For further information contact the Halkevi centre:
Tel: 020 7249 6980 or Fax: 020 7690 4003

Tuesday 15 July, 6-9pm
Defending the right to dissent and protest
Legal Action for Women, self-help legal workshop
Crossroads Women¹s Centre, 230a Kentish Town Road, entrance in Caversham Rd. Wheelchair accessible. Limited parking nearby
Nearest tube: Kentish Town
Email: law@crossraodswomen.net

Saturday 19 July
Respect Festival, The Dome, North Greenwich
Tel: 020 7983 6554

Tuesday 22 July, 7.30pm, Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC), Monthly meeting
Phone Estella for further information: 020 7586 5892

Tuesday 22 July
The UK premiere of Veronica Guering starring Cate Blanchett
The Screen on the Green Cinema, Islington, London
Tickets for the screening and reception with the cast will be available for a minimum of £60 donation.
To reserve call Ruari on 020 7278 2312 or email: ruairi@indexoncensorship.org

Tuesday 1 to Thursday 31 July
Palestine at the Pictures II - Major Palestinian Film Festival
For full list of film screenings see: www.caabu.org/events/related_events.html
ICA Cinema, The Mall, SW1
http://www.ica.org.uk

The ICA is organising a season called 'Palestine at the Pictures', with many good things. 'After Jenin' (which may or may not be one of them) will be shown at 6.30pm on July 5 & 6.

 

ICA Cinema
The Mall
London SW1
Tickets & Information: 020 7930 3647 http://www.ica.org.uk

Palestine at the Pictures II, July 1-31 2003
The dedication of film to revolutionary and humanitarian causes has had a long and honourable history in confronting international audiences with ongoing and brutal injustices. The work of Palestinian filmmakers and their supporters throughout the world is no exception as increasingly the injustice meted out in 1947/48 has been magnified and intensified year on year. In fiction and documentary these films unequivocally elucidate and represent the historic and daily tragedies of the Palestinians.

Curation and film notes: Sheila Whitaker

We're delighted to welcome some of the filmmakers to introduce their work during this season.

Cinema 1: 27 July, 1.30pm
Edward Said
Edward Said is a rare figure: a politically engaged intellectual. He has given a four-hour interview, the last he will give, and the ICA is delighted to screen it, unedited, in its entirety. Said speaks with a rare intimacy, personally, of his father and of his own illness, of his politics and of Palestine. Produced by D.G Guttenplan, the interviewer is Charles Glass.
Dir Mike Dibb
UK 2003, 240 mins

Nash Room: 20 July, 4pm
Film Makers in Palestine
Curator Sheila Whitaker in conversation with film makers Katie Barlow, Jenny Morgan, Maysoon Pachachi, Omar Al Qattan and Leila Sansour about their experiences of shooting in Palestine.
£5, £4 Concs. £3 ICA Members

1-2 July, 6.45pm
Cactus (al-sabbar)
History - and especially its rewriting and subsequent recovery - informs this documentary. Zuhaira Sabbagh, a Palestinian Israeli, runs a youth project to find and photograph destroyed Arab villages, thus peacefully opposing Israel's attempts to erase the villages not simply physically but also with the underlying strategy of rewriting the history of the land and its people. During the making, a complex and fascinating friendship grew up between Sabbagh and Hans Bernath who has represented the International Red Cross in Israel for 50 years and finds himself caught between wanting to spill the beans and the need to respect professional confidentiality.
Dir Patrick Burge
Switzerland 2000, 97 mins, Subs

1-2 July, 9pm
Crossing Kalandia
A video diary reflecting the life of a Palestinian family during one year of the al-Aqsa Intifada. (Dir Subhi Zobaidi, Italy/Palestine 2002, 52 mins) + Local, documenting the realities of living under a military curfew with humour and dignity. (Dir Imad Ahmed, Ismail Habash, Raed Al helou, Palestine 2002, 52 mins). Total running time: 104 mins, Subs

3 July, 6.30pm; 13 July, 3.45pm
Tragedy in the Holy Land: The Second Uprising
Made for US audiences and using archival footage and interviews with a range of experts and scholars, the film documents the origins of the Palestinian tragedy through an examination of Zionist ideology and its inevitable consequences for the Palestinians, setting out the historical facts from fictions, illuminating the core issues and redressing the balance of misinformation particularly current in the US. Whilst its approach is, inevitably, influenced by its US target audience, anyone, American or otherwise, should find its subject matter illuminating.
Dir Dennis Mueller
US 2001, 121 mins, Subs

3-4 July, 6.45pm
The Inner Tour
Ironically, the only way many Palestinian exiles can visit their homes is by taking a guided coach tour of Israel. The film follows such a group as the young see their ancestral, deserted villages for the first time and the older generation search to find the ruins of their homes.
Dir Ra'anan Alexandrowicz
Israel/Palestine 2000, 85 mins, Subs

5-6 July, 6.30pm
After Jenin
A testimony to the horrors of the Jenin atrocity. (Dir Jenny Morgan, Abu Dhabi 2002, 52 mins). Plus Staying Alive (Bidna Na'ish), an examination of Palestinians who risk their lives throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. (Dir GhadaTerawi Switzerland/Palestine 2001, 28 mins). Total running time: 80 mins, Subs

5-6 July, 3.15pm
Saladin (Al-Nasir Salah al-Din)
Egypt's first epic, filmed in Eastman colour and wide screen. Chahine's association of Nasser with the twelfth century Arab leader who united Arab fiefdoms and liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders gave the film a contemporary resonance. Large scale sequences involving thousands of extras, intimate scenes handled with equal aplomb and sub-plots on the need for religious tolerance and humanitarian impulses combine to overcome the idealistic representation of Saladin and ensure that the film, in its subject and portrayal of Islam, has, perhaps, an even greater relevance today.
Dir Youssef Chahine
Egypt 1963, 145 mins, Subs

7-8 July, 6.15pm
Letter from Palestine
Ten stories by Italian Directors in a film which consists of fragments, light, faces and case studies that bear witness to the extraordinary cultural and intellectual, but also material and physical vitality of these oppressed people. (Italy 2002, 61 mins) + Children of Fire Shot during the first intifada, Nablus-born Mai Masri returned there after 17 years - to immediately confront death and destruction. (Dir Mai Masri, UK 1990, 50 mins). Total running time: 111 mins, Subs

9-10 July, 6.30pm
Jeremy Hardy vs. the Israeli Army
British comedian Jeremy Hardy travels to Palestine in March 2002 and joins a campaign to protect Palestinian farmers against the hostility of settlers, but finds himself caught up in the events of the invasion. He decides to return later, but this time to take on the Israeli army.
Dir Leila Sansour
UK/Palestine 2002, 75 mins, Subs

11-12 July, 6.45pm
Rana's Wedding
Rana, a young Palestinian, sneaks out of her father's house at daybreak to avoid having to go with him to Egypt. She wanders through East Jerusalem and Ramallah, looking for her lover who she decides to marry that very day. But with roadblocks, soldiers and guns being the reality of Palestinian life, normal things like love and weddings are somewhat problematic.
Dir Hany Abu-Assad
Palestine/NL 2002, 87 mins, Subs

12 July, 4.30pm; 13 July, 6.15pm
In Search of Palestine
Narrated by Edward Said, this film examines the painful history of Palestinians as well as contemporary realities at the end of the Oslo process. Dir Charles Bruce, UK 1998, 52 mins. + Citizen Bishara A portrait of Dr.Azmi Bishara, a candidate for Prime Minister and a powerful and charismatic advocate of Palestinian and human rights in Israel. (Dir Simone Bitton, France, 52') Total running time: 104 mins, Subs

14-15 July, 6.15pm
This Is Not Living
A collection of films dealing with memory and loss. In Blanche's Homeland (Dir Maryse Gargour, France 2001, 28 mins) an elderly woman born in Jaffa, Palestine, resists the world's amnesia when it comes to the tragedy of the Palestinians. Naim & Wadee'a (Dir Najwa Najjar, Palestine 1999, 28 mins), looks at life in 1948 Jaffa through the lives of the eponymous couple and in This is Not Living (Dir Alia Arasoughly, Palestine 2001, 42 mins), a group of Palestinian women consider life, war and peace. Plus the story of the 18 year-old female suicide bomber Ayat told by her father. (Dir Katie Barlow, UK 2003, 5 mins) + Hanadi - who is 21, pregnant and will probably never see her husband who is imprisoned and accused of involvement with suicide bombings. (Dir Katie Barlow, UK 2003, 15 mins) Total running time: 118 mins, Subs

18 July, 6.45pm; 19 July 7pm
Ticket to Jerusalem
Jaber and Sanah live in a refugee camp next to Ramallah. She works with the Red Crescent emergency service, he runs a mobile cinema servicing the West Bank - except that, under occupation, nothing Palestinian is very mobile. A testament to Palestinian resistance.
Dir Rashid Masharawi
Palestine/NL 2002, 85 mins, Subs

19 July, 5pm; 20 July, 6.45pm
Ford Transit
An often-humorous portrait of the day-to-day reality of a Palestinian taxi driver caught between checkpoints and political discussions. Plus Diary of an Art Competition (dir Omar Al-Qattan, 16 mins), a testimony to the national importance of art and culture.
Dir Hany Abu-Assad
Palestine 2002, 80 mins, Subs

21-22 July, 6.45pm
Paradise Lost
Two films by Palestinian Israeli filmmaker Ebtisam Mara'ana focusing on the unrecognised Arab villages in Israel - O Wake Up to the Homeland (1997) + Paradise Lost (2003, Dir Ebtisam Mara'ana, Israel). Plus 500 Dunham on the Moon, a deeply ironic film focused on two Arab villages. (Dir Rachel Leah Jones, US/France 2002, 47 minutes). Total running time: 76 mins, Subs

23-24 July, 6.30pm
A Number Zero
The filmmaker returns to Bethlehem during the Israeli army invasion in April 2001 (Dir Saed Andoni, Palestine 2002, 27 mins) + I am a Little Angel Shot in Bethlehem the film tells the heartrending story of three children who became innocent victims of IDF violence (dir Hanna Misleh, Palestine 2003, 40 mins) + Caoimhe - the aftermath of the Jenin massacre. (Dir Katie Barlow, UK 2003, 30 mins). Total running time: 97 mins, Subs

25-26 July, 9pm
The Milky Way (Darb al Tabanat)
The film deals with Palestinian villages during 1964, the final year of Israeli occupation in Galilee. A world filled with humour and cruelty, derailed dreams and small pleasures.
Dir Ali Nassar
Palestine 1997, 104 mins, Subs

27-28 July, 9pm
Bitter Water
With events escalating daily in the occupied territories, Palestinians living in exile in camps outside Palestine are somewhat forgotten. Bourji Al Barajneh camp in the Lebanon was established by the UN as a temporary solution to the refugee crisis following the military establishment of Israel: over 50 years later it is still there. This is a portrait which inexorably but powerfully provides a moving testament to a lost people.
Dir Maysoon Pachachi/Noura Sakkaf
UK 2003, 76 mins, Subs

30-31 July, 9pm
Gaza Strip
In 2001 James Longley went to the Gaza Strip to collect preliminary material for a documentary. Then Sharon came to power, the brutality and violence of the occupation escalated and three months later he finally returned to the US with 75 hours of footage. From this he has fashioned a raw but moving picture of the daily lives and deaths of Palestinians. Plus Omar Al Qattan's film of John Berger's recent trip to Palestine.
Dir James Longley
US 2002, 74 mins, Subs