‘MY demonstration continues,’ said Brian Haw on Monday, after three Court of Appeal judges ruled in favour of the government and the chief of the Metropolitan Police against his five-year-long peace vigil opposite parliament.
Holding up a picture of a baby with horrific deformities, taken by a doctor in Afghanistan, Haw asked reporters: ‘Would you consider that torture if it was your baby?
‘I consider this is our baby. I’m tortured that we can do this to other people’s kids!
‘We don’t know the wickedness that’s being done to other people by our government.’
He said that taking down the anti-war banners and photographs at Parliament Square would stop all those people visiting Westminster from seeing exactly what the British government is doing in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places.
‘Should I take down this board which protests against genocide?’ he asked. ‘Should I remove this painting that was made by a young Spanish student when he visited Britain?
‘How many of these banners do you think the police will allow me to keep?
‘Look at the picture of armless Ali. Should I take that down?’
He asked if it was right to keep British troops ‘dying for oil’ in Iraq and Afghanistan.
‘They’re not dying to keep us safe,’ he insisted.
He said the reason there was animosity in Iraq to the presence of British troops was because – like any people – they did not like being occupied by a foreign army, but also because British imperialism had a history of ‘murdering them’ in a series of wars over the last 90 years.
The British government has been ‘torturing their babies and kids’ through war and sanctions since the first Gulf War in 1991, he added.
‘If we don’t take the first steps towards peace, who will?’ he continued, addressing the government.
‘We have the power to make peace and we have the power to wage the most awful war. Which are we going to do?
‘This is what I want to write in the newspapers.’
He said that soldiers had told him, ‘What we’re doing is wrong. We’re killing them all and they didn’t do anything to us.’
Haw said that he would leave Parliament Square, if the British government stopped waging war.
‘I want to go home with all my heart. The soldiers want to go home. The people of Palestine want to go home, to the homeland that was stolen from them.
‘I’m the last person in Britain who had free speech and now this is being stolen from me.
‘Did you know about the oil in the Caspian Sea? Did you know about the American pipeline?
‘We’re liberating the poppy in Afghanistan, isn’t that great! It’s like the Opium Wars.’
Again he asked: ‘Do you want to give the kids something good, something to live for?
‘These wars are for oil, for the arms industry. We’re talking about mega-bucks.’
He explained about the picture of the baby from Afghanistan.
He said the baby was one of triplets, a victim of Depleted Uranium munitions, ‘made of our nuclear waste’ and used by the US-led forces now occupying the country.
‘We’ve dropped thousands of tons on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, twice now.
‘This is how we dispose of it.
‘It’s very hard, very dense. Does it burn? It hits the steel of a tank and goes through it like a hot knife through butter and then it atomises.
‘It burns so brilliant white. If it’s so “harmless’’, then why don’t they make fireworks with it?!’
He said there was a ‘seventeen-fold’ increase in cancers in Iraq following the first Gulf War in 1991 when DU munitions were used against Iraq for the first time.
‘In this war, we have used a lot, lot more of the stuff,’ he added.
Haw expressed his outrage at the move by the government, the Home Secretary and chief of the Met Police to get last July’s ruling in favour of his right to protest overturned.
He spoke again about the photograph he was holding.
He said it was taken by a Dr Mohammed Miraki.
He read out some of Dr Miraki’s notes, which said: ‘I took this photograph on the last day of my journey. One of the triplets in Afghanistan.
‘Afghanistan has become the disaster words could not describe.
‘Hence, I decided to illustrate this disasters with babies born deformed.
‘I wonder if these photographs could elevate your humanity. It is up to you to do whatever you think is human.
‘Can you imagine the doctor with that baby and the other two of the triplets?’ Haw asked.
‘I don’t know if that baby is alive. How can you tell?
‘This is what we’ve done to other people’s babies.
‘This is the biggest crime against humanity in the history of the world.
‘Are we going to have babies like this to the end of time?!
‘Stop this abomination! I want people to care. I want all of the people to care.
‘If we see this and know what’s going on and it’s getting worse and worse . . . I’m here because I’m responsible. We are each responsible. Look at what our leader is part of doing! This is a “Blair babe’’! A Bush baby!
‘Berlusconi’s gone. Aznar’s gone, and how can we have Blair and Bush and all the bad ones behind them, like Cheney and Rumsfeld?’
Supporters of Brian Haw said Britain was being turned into a ‘police state’ and likened Blair to ‘tyrant Charles 1’, warning that banning demonstrations outside parliament was ‘the kind of thing that leads to revolutions’.
Miranda Dunn and Eric Levy said: ‘Brian is the conscience of the British people.
‘People have come to this pavement and they have seen what has happened to the children of Iraq and the children of Afghanistan, due to the DU bombing and the sanctions.
‘Blair is a tyrant like Charles 1 and he has taken our democracy and the support for the Tories at the local elections is nothing except a condemnation of Blair.
‘When the British people hear that Brian Haw, their conscience, has been made illegal, they will say that Blair is a tyrant and should be charged with war crimes.’
Eric Levy said: ‘You never had demonstrations of two million people, or even of more than 100,000 people, before the Iraq war.
‘Who can condone genocide?’
He added: ‘Now that we have this legislation banning democratic protest outside parliament, this has become a police state.
‘A few months ago Maya Evans and Milan Rai read out the names of the British dead in Iraq at the Cenotaph and they got arrested and convicted for that.
‘We are against genocide and troops in Iraq.’
Miranda Dunn said: ‘It’s up to the British public to stand by Brian because Brian is the voice of the British people’s conscience.’
Brian Haw began his non-stop vigil opposite parliament in June 2001.
In 2002, Westminster City Council sought an injunction requiring him to remove his placards.
In their ruling against him at the Court of Appeal, the judges said: ‘He lives on the pavement and displays a large number of placards.
‘More recently it has been to protest against the government’s policy in Iraq.’
The judgement continued: ‘By Section 134 (2), it permits the police to impose conditions on the holding of a demonstration, so as to prevent hindrance to any person wishing to enter or leave the Palace of Westminster, hindrance of the proper operation of Parliament, serious public disorder, serious damage to property, disruption to the life of the community, a security risk in any part of the designated area and risk to safety of members of the public.
‘Any breach of such conditions is a criminal offence.’
On July 29 last year, Brian won a judicial review that he was not required to seek authorisation for his continuing protest, under Sections 132-138 of the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.
The ruling against him on Monday said that the essential question before the Division Court last year and before the Court of Appeal was whether or not the Act applied to Brian’s demonstration.
The judges said that Section 136 of the Act ‘provides that an organiser guilty of an offence is liable to up to 51 weeks imprisonment and a fine’.
Their ruling continued: ‘Section 138 gives the Secretary of State power to make an order specifying the designated area. Such an order has been made and includes Parliament Square.’
The ruling then referred to ‘Ms Lieven’s skeleton argument on behalf of the Secretary of State before the Divisional Court. . .
‘ “It is simply nonsensical to suggest that Parliament would have brought in provision to deal with (security problems caused by demonstrations) in the future, but would have been content to allow an existing security concern to continue.’’ ’
The judges said they had reached the conclusion that the 2005 Act was meant to regulate all demonstrations within the ‘designated area’, whenever they began.
Brian Haw said: ‘We will appeal to the House of Lords, to Strasbourg if necessary.’
