P5248165
Obama visits Buckingham Palace as protesters gather outside. London 24.05.2011
As U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle visited Buckingham Palace today to meet the Queen and later on attend a State banquet in his honour, a heavy policing and security operation took place involving uniformed, plain-clothed and armed police as well as US and UK Army and CIA operatives, as several large groups of protesters representing Libya, Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, Syria, the Stop The War Coalition (StWC) and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) gathered across the road from the Palace by Canada Gate to vigorously denounce duplicitous US foreign policy which sees the very dictators which the so-called Arab Spring is trying to remove being supported financially, politically and militarily by the Obama Administration with strong support from British Prime Minister David Cameron's government, as both leaders publicly mouth insincere, media-friendly platitudes about the need for democracy in the Arab regions.
Also amongst the protesters were protesters in orange jump-suits calling for the release from Guantanamo Bay of British muslim Shaker Aamer, who has been held without charge or trial for over nine years in the harshest of conditions in the notorious American military prison. All the other British detainees have now been returned home, having all been the victims of cruel and inhuman treatment at the hands of their US Military captors, yet Shaker Aamer remains.
Though President Obama made the closure of Guantanamo one of the central themes of his pre-election campaigns, and despite him having signed an Executive Order to close Guantanamo by January 2010 soon after becoming President, the Military prison remains very much open for business as usual, and remains a part of the continuing U.S. policy of illegal abduction, rendition, torture and indefinite detention without trial or due process in the so-called "War on Terror".
Today's protesters also called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay and the equally infamous CIA prison at Bagram Airbase in Iraq, and for the immediate release of all the detainees who have not been charged with a single offence despite being brutalised for years by the U.S.A., which seems to think that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to them.
All photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not reproduce or reblog my images without my permission.
P5248165
Obama visits Buckingham Palace as protesters gather outside. London 24.05.2011
As U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle visited Buckingham Palace today to meet the Queen and later on attend a State banquet in his honour, a heavy policing and security operation took place involving uniformed, plain-clothed and armed police as well as US and UK Army and CIA operatives, as several large groups of protesters representing Libya, Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, Syria, the Stop The War Coalition (StWC) and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) gathered across the road from the Palace by Canada Gate to vigorously denounce duplicitous US foreign policy which sees the very dictators which the so-called Arab Spring is trying to remove being supported financially, politically and militarily by the Obama Administration with strong support from British Prime Minister David Cameron's government, as both leaders publicly mouth insincere, media-friendly platitudes about the need for democracy in the Arab regions.
Also amongst the protesters were protesters in orange jump-suits calling for the release from Guantanamo Bay of British muslim Shaker Aamer, who has been held without charge or trial for over nine years in the harshest of conditions in the notorious American military prison. All the other British detainees have now been returned home, having all been the victims of cruel and inhuman treatment at the hands of their US Military captors, yet Shaker Aamer remains.
Though President Obama made the closure of Guantanamo one of the central themes of his pre-election campaigns, and despite him having signed an Executive Order to close Guantanamo by January 2010 soon after becoming President, the Military prison remains very much open for business as usual, and remains a part of the continuing U.S. policy of illegal abduction, rendition, torture and indefinite detention without trial or due process in the so-called "War on Terror".
Today's protesters also called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay and the equally infamous CIA prison at Bagram Airbase in Iraq, and for the immediate release of all the detainees who have not been charged with a single offence despite being brutalised for years by the U.S.A., which seems to think that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to them.
All photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not reproduce or reblog my images without my permission.