The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association works independently to inform and advise the United Nations Human Rights Council.
The position was created by Human Rights Council resolution 15/21 in October 2010. This position is voluntary, and the expert is not United Nations staff nor paid for his/her work.
The first mandate-holder, Maina Kiai, took up his duties on May 1, 2011, for an initial period of three years. He began his second three-year term in May 2014 and completed his term on April 30, 2017. Kiai is a lawyer and human rights defender from Kenya.
Right to strike is essential to democracy
The United Nations' Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai, has reminded member states of the International Labour Organization (ILO) - including the UK - that they have a positive obligation to uphold the right to strike.
Speaking at an ILO meeting on Monday 06 March 2017 in Geneva, Kiai argued that the right to strike is fundamental to the preservation of democracy.
"The concentration of power in one sector – whether in the hands of government or business – inevitably leads to the erosion of democracy, and an increase in inequalities and marginalization with all their attendant consequences. The right to strike is a check on this concentration of power," he explained.
The right to strike has been established in international law as a corollary to the right of freedom of association for decades, and is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights as Article 11.
As a member state of the ILO and of the EU, the UK is legally obliged to uphold the right to strike, although through the Trades Union Act 2016 and the anti-trade union laws that preceded it, the government is making it harder and harder for trade unions to take industrial action. Kiai criticised such actions, saying government's have a duty not to impede workers' ability to take industrial action.
"I deplore the various attempts made to erode the right to strike at national and multilateral levels," the expert said, reminding delegates: "Protest action in relation to government social and economic policy, and against negative corporate practices, forms part of the basic civil liberties whose respect is essential for the meaningful exercise of trade union rights. This right enables them to engage with companies and governments on a more equal footing, and Member States have a positive obligation to protect this right, and a negative obligation not to interfere with its exercise."
Who are the defenders of rights and freedoms?
During the 90's Poland had its fair share of offices and their very important new occupants furnished with desks, behind which portraits of Margaret Thatcher and/or Ronald Reagan were displayed with a certain pride and posturing. These two works, by Hans Haacke from the 1980's, capture a certain unguarded quality in the masks of power, power at war with people and their right to act in their own interests.
While Thatcher was out to crush the unions as "the enemy within", Reagan would preside over a attempts of certain members of the White House national security staff to circumvent Congressional proscription of covert military aid to the Contras (terrorists attempting to destroy the Nicaraguan revolution), and that ultimately resulted in the Iran-Contra Affair.
Two members of administration, National Security Advisor John Poindexter and Col. Oliver North worked through CIA and military channels to sell arms to the Iranian government and give the profits to the contra guerillas in Nicaragua, who were engaged in a bloody civil war. Both actions were contrary to acts of Congress. Reagan professed ignorance of the plot, but admitted that he had supported the initial sale of arms to Iran, on the grounds that such sales were supposed to help secure the release of Americans being held hostage by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
When Margaret Thatcher died Radio Poland ran this story:
Sikorski – 'Thatcher was a fearless champion of liberty'
08.04.2013 15:37
Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has described former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher as 'a fearless champion of liberty' after news of her death was released on Monday.
Sikorski, who was himself granted asylum in the UK after martial law was declared by Poland's communist authorities in 1981, reflected that Baroness Thatcher “stood up for captive nations” and “helped the free world win the Cold War.”
Writing on his Twitter account, Sikorski declared that the late British leader “deserves a statue in Poland.”
Sikorski's sentiments were echoed later on Monday by former president Lech Walesa, the erstwhile leader of the Solidarity trade union.
“She was a great person. She did a great deal for the world, along with [late US president] Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Solidarity, she contributed to the demise of communism in Poland and Central Europe,” Walesa told Agence France Presse (AFP).
“I'm praying for her,” he added.
Baroness Thatcher died of a stroke aged 87 on Monday morning, according to her spokesman Lord Bell. She had been suffering from dementia for several years, as was first acknowledged by her daughter Carol, in 2008.
As head of Britain's conservative party, Thatcher, dubbed 'the Iron Lady,' became the UK's first female prime minister in May 1979, holding the post until November 1990.
Although a staunch anti-communist, recently declassified documents indicate that she wavered over throwing Britain's weight behind Solidarity in December 1981, after martial law was declared in Poland.
Strike
Strike (Russian: Стачка, translit. Stachka) is a 1925 silent film made in the Soviet Union by Sergei Eisenstein. It was Eisenstein's first full-length feature film, and he would go on to make The Battleship Potemkin later that year.
It was acted by the Proletcult Theatre, and composed of six parts. It was in turn, intended to be one part of a seven-part series, entitled Towards Dictatorship (of the proletariat), that was left unfinished.
Eisenstein's influential essay, Montage of Attractions was written between Strike's production and premiere.
The montage of attractions asserts that an audience is moved emotionally, psychically, and politically by sudden bursts of aggressive movement. Eisenstein adapted this theory from the Proletkult to the cinema in his 1923 essay The Montage of Attractions. Attractions are a molecular unit of a theatrical whole that is independent of narrative and setting. In his 1924 essay The Montage of Film Attractions, Eisenstein makes explicit linkage of film and theater through a common audience. Here, an attraction is "...any demonstrable fact (an action, an object, a phenomenon, a conscious combination, and so on) that is known and proven to exercise a definite effect on the attention and emotions of the audience and that, combined with others, possess the characteristics of concentrating the audience's emotions in any direction dictated by the production’s purpose." The intent was to ground attractions in revolutionary ideology in order coax the audience into a sympathetic position.The film depicts a strike in 1903 by the workers of a factory in pre-revolutionary Russia, and their subsequent suppression. The film is most famous for a sequence near the end in which the violent suppression of the strike is cross-cut with footage of cattle being slaughtered, although there are several other points in the movie where animals are used as metaphors for the conditions of various individuals. Another theme in the film is collectivism in opposition to individualism which was viewed as a convention of western film. Collective efforts and collectivization of characters are central to both Strike and Battleship Potemkin.
The right to protest
Ronald Reagan was an actor before he became a union activist and later a politician . . .
Back to the Future is a 1985 American adventure film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale. It stars Michael J. Fox as teenager Marty McFly, who is sent back in time to 1955, where he meets his future parents and accidentally becomes his mother's romantic interest. Christopher Lloyd portrays the eccentric scientist Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown, inventor of the time-traveling DeLorean, who helps Marty repair history and return to 1985.
Ronald Reagan, when as President Ronald Reagan and an ex-actor and a fan of the film, referred to the film in his 1986 State of the Union Address when he said;
"Never has there been a more exciting time to be alive, a time of rousing wonder and heroic achievement. As they said in the film Back to the Future, 'Where we're going, we don't need roads'."
When he first saw the joke about him being president, he ordered the projectionist of the theatre to stop the reel, roll it back, and run it again!
As an actor, in 1937, Reagan took a screen test that led to a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers studios. He spent the first few years of his Hollywood career in the "B film" unit, where, Reagan joked, the producers "didn't want them good; they wanted them Thursday".
He earned his first screen credit with a starring role in the 1937 movie Love Is on the Air, and by the end of 1939 he had already appeared in 19 films, including Dark Victory with Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart.
Before the film Santa Fe Trail with Errol Flynn in 1940, he played the role of George "The Gipper" Gipp in the film Knute Rockne, All American; from it, he acquired the lifelong nickname "the Gipper. In 1941, exhibitors voted him the fifth most popular star from the younger generation in Hollywood.
Reagan played his favorite acting role in 1942's Kings Row, where he plays a double amputee who recites the line "Where's the rest of me?"—later used as the title of his 1965 autobiography.
Reagan was first elected to the Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in 1941, serving as an alternate member. After World War II, he resumed service and became third vice-president in 1946. The adoption of conflict-of-interest bylaws in 1947 led the SAG president and six board members to resign; Reagan was nominated in a special election for the position of president and was subsequently elected. He was chosen by the membership to serve seven additional one-year terms, from 1947 to 1952 and in 1959. Reagan led the SAG through eventful years that were marked by labor-management disputes, the Taft–Hartley Act, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings and the Hollywood blacklist era.
During the late 1940s, Reagan and his then-wife, Jane Wyman, provided the FBI with the names of actors within the motion picture industry whom they believed to be communist sympathizers. Though he expressed reservations, he said, "Do they expect us to constitute ourselves as a little FBI of our own and determine just who is a Commie and who isn't?"
Reagan also testified on the subject before the House Un-American Activities Committee. A fervent anti-communist, he reaffirmed his commitment to democratic principles, stating, "I never as a citizen want to see our country become urged, by either fear or resentment of this group, that we ever compromise with any of our democratic principles through that fear or resentment."
Reagan gained national attention in his speeches for conservative presidential contender Barry Goldwater in 1964. Speaking for Goldwater, Reagan stressed his belief in the importance of smaller government. He consolidated themes that he had developed in his talks for GE to deliver his famous speech, "A Time for Choosing":
The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing ... You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream—the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order—or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.This "A Time for Choosing" speech was not enough to turn around the faltering Goldwater campaign, but it was the key event that established Reagan's national political visibility.
— October 27, 1964
California Republicans were impressed with Reagan's political views and charisma after his "A Time for Choosing" speech, and in late 1965 he announced his campaign for Governor in the 1966 election. He defeated former San Francisco mayor George Christopher in the GOP primary.
In Reagan's campaign, he emphasized two main themes: "to send the welfare bums back to work," and, in reference to burgeoning anti-war and anti-establishment student protests at the University of California at Berkeley, "to clean up the mess at Berkeley." In 1966, Reagan accomplished what both U.S. Senator William F. Knowland in 1958 and former Vice President Richard Nixon in 1962 had attempted to do: he was elected, defeating two-term governor Pat Brown, and was sworn in on January 2, 1967. In his first term, he froze government hiring and approved tax hikes to balance the budget.
Zabriskie Point is a 1970 American drama film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, widely noted at the time for its setting in the counterculture of the United States. Some of the film's scenes were shot on location at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley. (See more at the foot of this page)
Kathleen Cleaver, a member of the Black Panthers and wife of Eldridge Cleaver, appeared in the documentary-like student meeting scene at the opening of the film.
Demonstration and People's Park Berkeley 1969
As Governor of California from 1967 to 1975, Ronald Reagan had been publicly critical of university administrators for tolerating student demonstrations at the Berkeley campus. He had received popular support for his 1966 gubernatorial campaign promise to crack down on what the public perceived as a generally lax attitude at California's public universities. Reagan called the Berkeley campus "a haven for communist sympathizers, protesters, and sex deviants." Reagan considered the creation of the park a direct leftist challenge to the property rights of the university, and he found in it an opportunity to fulfill his campaign promise.
On Thursday, May 15, 1969 at 4:30 a.m., Governor Reagan sent California Highway Patrol and Berkeley police officers into People's Park, overriding Chancellor Heyns' May 6 promise that nothing would be done without warning.
The officers cleared an 8-block area around the park while a large section of what had been planted was destroyed and an 8-foot (2.4 m)-tall perimeter chain-link wire fence was installed to keep people out and to prevent the planting of more trees, grass, flowers, or shrubs.
The action came at the request of Berkeley's Republican mayor. It became the impetus for the "most violent confrontation in the university's history."
Beginning at noon on May 15, about 3,000 people appeared in Sproul Plaza at nearby UC Berkeley for a rally, the original purpose of which was to discuss the Arab–Israeli conflict. Several people spoke; then, Michael Lerner ceded the Free Speech platform to ASUC Student Body President Dan Siegel because students were concerned about the fencing-off and destruction of the park. Siegel said later that he never intended to precipitate a riot; however, when he shouted "Let's take the park!," police turned off the sound system. The crowd responded spontaneously, moving down Telegraph Avenue toward People's Park chanting, "We want the park!"
Arriving in the early afternoon, protesters were met by the remaining 159 Berkeley and university police officers assigned to guard the fenced-off park site.
The protesters opened a fire hydrant, several hundred protesters attempted to tear down the fence and threw bottles, rocks, and bricks at the officers, and then the officers fired tear gas canisters. A major confrontation ensued between police and the crowd, which grew to 4,000.
Reagan's Chief of Staff, Edwin Meese III, a former district attorney from Alameda County, had established a reputation for firm opposition to those protesting the Vietnam War at the Oakland Induction Center and elsewhere. Meese assumed responsibility for the governmental response to the People's Park protest, and he called in the Alameda County Sheriff's deputies, which brought the total police presence to 791 officers from various jurisdictions.
Under Meese's direction, police were permitted to use whatever methods they chose against the crowds, which had swelled to approximately 6,000 people. Officers in full riot gear (helmets, shields, and gas masks) obscured their badges to avoid being identified and headed into the crowds with nightsticks swinging."
As the protesters retreated, the Alameda County Sheriff's deputies pursued them several blocks down Telegraph Avenue as far as Willard Junior High School at Derby Street, firing tear gas canisters and "00" buckshot at the crowd's backs as they fled.
Authorities initially claimed that only birdshot had been used as shotgun ammunition. When physicians provided "00" pellets removed from the wounded as evidence that buckshot had been used, Sheriff Frank Madigan of Alameda County justified the use of shotguns loaded with lethal buckshot by stating, "The choice was essentially this: to use shotguns—because we didn't have the available manpower—or retreat and abandon the City of Berkeley to the mob." Sheriff Madigan did admit, however, that some of his deputies (many of whom were Vietnam War veterans) had been overly aggressive in their pursuit of the protesters, acting "as though they were Viet Cong."
"The indiscriminate use of shotguns [was] sheer insanity," according to Dr. Harry Brean, chief radiologist at Berkeley's Herrick Hospital.
Alameda County Sheriff's deputies used shotguns to fire at people sitting on the roof at the Telegraph Repertory Cinema. James Rector, a student, was killed when shot by police. The Alamada County Coroner's report listed cause of death as "shock and hemorrhage due to multiple shotgun wounds and perforation of the aorta." The buckshot is the same size as a .38 caliber bullet. Governor Reagan conceded that Rector was probably shot by police but countered that "it's very naive to assume that you should send anyone into that kind of conflict with a flyswatter." The University of California Police Department (UCPD) claims Rector threw steel rebar down onto the police; however, according to Time, Rector was a bystander, not a protester.
Carpenter Alan Blanchard was permanently blinded by a load of birdshot directly to his face.
At least 128 Berkeley residents were admitted to local hospitals for head trauma, shotgun wounds, and other serious injuries inflicted by police. The actual number of seriously wounded was likely much higher, because many of the injured did not seek treatment at local hospitals to avoid being arrested. Local medical students and interns organized volunteer mobile first-aid teams to help protestors and bystanders injured by buckshot, nightsticks, or tear gas. One local hospital reported two students wounded with large caliber rifles as well.
News reports at the time of the shooting indicated that 50 were injured, including five police officers. Some local hospital logs indicate that 19 police officers or Alameda County Sheriff's deputies were treated for minor injuries; none were hospitalized. However, the UCPD claims that 111 police officers were injured, including one California Highway Patrol Officer Albert Bradley, who was knifed in the chest.
That evening, Governor Reagan declared a state of emergency in Berkeley and sent in 2,700 National Guard troops. The Berkeley City Council symbolically voted 8–1 against the decision.
For two weeks, the streets of Berkeley were patrolled by National Guardsmen, who broke up even small demonstrations with tear gas. Governor Reagan was steadfast and unapologetic: "Once the dogs of war have been unleashed, you must expect things will happen, and that people, being human, will make mistakes on both sides."
During the People's Park incident, National Guard troops were stationed in front of Berkeley's empty lots to prevent protesters from planting flowers, shrubs, or trees. Young hippie women taunted and teased the troops, on one occasion handing out marijuana-laced brownies and lemonade spiked with LSD. Some protesters, their faces hidden with scarves, challenged police and National Guard troops. Hundreds were arrested, and Berkeley citizens who ventured out during curfew hours risked police harassment and beatings.
Berkeley city police officers were discovered to be parking several blocks away from the Annex park, removing their badges and donning grotesque Halloween-type masks (including pig faces) to attack citizens they found in the park annex."
On Wednesday, May 21, 1969, a midday memorial was held for student James Rector at Sproul Plaza on the university campus, with several thousand people attending.
On Thursday, May 22, 1969, about 250 demonstrators were arrested and charged with unlawful assembly; bail was set at $800 ($5,185 in 2014 dollars).
Harrison Ford has an uncredited role as one of the arrested student demonstrators being held inside a Los Angeles police station.
Showing solidarity with students, 177 faculty members said that they were "unwilling to teach until peace has been achieved by the removal of police and troops." On May 23, the Berkeley faculty senate endorsed (642 to 95) a proposal by the College of Environmental Designs to have the park become the centerpiece of an experiment in community-generated design.
In a separate university referendum, UC Berkeley students voted 12,719 to 2,175 in favor of keeping the park; the turnout represents about half of the registered student body.
Law enforcement was using a new form of crowd control, pepper gas. The editorial offices of Berkeley Tribe were sprayed with pepper gas and had tear gas canisters fired into the offices, injuring underground press staff.
On May 20, 1969, National Guard helicopters flew over the Berkeley campus, dispensing airborne tear gas that winds dispersed over the entire city, sending school children miles away to hospitals.
This was one of the largest deployments of tear gas during the Vietnam era protests. Governor Reagan would concede that this might have been a "tactical mistake." It had not yet been banned from warfare under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
The Washington Post wrote of the incident in an editorial: "[T]he indiscriminate gassing of a thousand people not at the time in violation of any law seems more than a little excessive."
The editorial also criticized legislation before the U.S. House of Representatives that would have "cut off Federal aid to universities which fail to head off campus disorders."
That legislation, the Higher Education Protection and Freedom of Expression Act of 1969 (Campus Disorder Bill, HR 11941, 91st Congress), was a response to mass protests and demonstrations at universities and colleges across the nation. It was introduced by House Special Subcommittee on Education chair Rep. Edith Green (D-OR). The bill would have required colleges and universities to file plans of action for dealing with campus unrest with the U.S. Commissioner of Education. The bill gave the institutions the power to suspend federal aid to students convicted—in court or by the university—of violating campus rules in connection with student riots. Any school that did not file such plans would lose federal funding.
Governor Reagan supported the federal legislation; in a March 19, 1969 statement, he urged Congress to "be equally concerned about those who commit violence who are not receiving aid." On May 20, 1969, Attorney General John N. Mitchell advised the Committee that existing law was "adequate."
On May 30, 1969, 30,000 Berkeley citizens (out of a population of 100,000) secured a city permit and marched without incident past the barricaded People's Park to protest Governor Reagan's occupation of their city, the death of James Rector, the blinding of Alan Blanchard, and the many injuries inflicted by police.
Young protesters slid flowers down the muzzles of bayoneted National Guard rifles, and a small airplane flew over the city trailing a banner that read;
"Let A Thousand Parks Bloom."
Nevertheless, over the next few weeks National Guard troops broke up any assemblies of more than four persons who congregated for any purpose on the streets of Berkeley, day or night. In the early summer, troops deployed in downtown Berkeley surrounded several thousand protesters and bystanders, emptying businesses, restaurants, and retail outlets of their owners and customers, and arresting them en masse.
In an address before the California Council of Growers on April 7, 1970, almost a year after "Bloody Thursday" and the death of James Rector, Governor Reagan defended his decision to use the California National Guard to quell Berkeley protests:
"If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. No more appeasement."
Berkeley Tribe editors decided to issue this quote in large type on the cover of its next edition.
Zabriskie Point
Zabriskie Point is a place and a film. As a place Zabriskie Point is a part of the Amargosa Range located east of Death Valley in Death Valley National Park in California, United States, and noted for its erosional landscape. The philosopher Michel Foucault called his 1975 acid trip at Zabriskie Point the greatest experience of his life.
The film, Zabriskie Point is a 1970 American drama film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, widely noted at the time for its setting in the counterculture of the United States. Although made in the US, the director brings to the so-called "counterculture" something that only an outsider can offer. This is perhaps the source of both the strength and the weakness of the film. Nevertheless, it stands alone as the only cinematic drama that addresses the cultural and political phenomena of the 1960's challenge to capitalism, and the guardians of American capitalism, as being the only route to the only "American Dream" on offer.
To this day the student movements in the 1960's at Berkeley continue to shape American political dialogue both on college campuses and in broader society, impacting on the political views and values of college students and the general public. And none more so than The Free Speech Movement. The (FSM) was a massive, long-lasting student protest which took place during the 1964–65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The Movement was informally under the central leadership of Berkeley graduate student Mario Savio. Other student leaders include Jack Weinberg, Michael Rossman, George Barton, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Michael Teal, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and others.
With the participation of thousands of students, the Free Speech Movement was the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s. Students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom.
The stilted discourses that form part of the narrative mean that understanding what is happening in the film is something more than a naturalism or pseudo-documentation, it is about the potential for significant cultural change, for a different version of emancipation in the face of political and economic power.
Some of the film's scenes were shot on location at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley. As part of the publicity involved in film industry press release reports it was claimed Antonioni would gather 10,000 extras in the desert for the filming of the lovemaking scene but in fact this never happened.
The scene was filmed with dust-covered and highly choreographed actors from The Open Theatre.
Nevertheless, for blatant political purposes, the United States Department of Justice investigated whether this violated the Mann Act – which forbade the taking of women across state lines for sexual purposes – however, no sex was filmed and no state lines were crossed, given that Death Valley is in California. State officials in Sacramento were also ready to charge Antonioni with "immoral conduct, prostitution or debauchery" if he staged an actual orgy. FBI officials investigated the film because of Antonioni's political views, and officials in Oakland accused the director of staging a real riot for a scene early in the film.
This final scene of the film is an operatic masterpiece of cinema.
No comments:
Post a Comment