Mass Arrest Shows Solidarity For Tribal Trial
On Monday March 23rd 29 rainforest activists from Earth First! groups from Oxford, London and Liverpool, Rainforest Action Groups from East Anglia and London, blockaded the Malaysian Airlines office in Piccadilly, London.
The action had been called by Angie Zelter of Reforest the Earth in solidarity with the 31 tribal people in Sarawak facing trial that day for blockading logging roads. Each protester had adopted the name of one of the tribal people for the day and wore it on a t-shirt or placard.
We arrived at 10.00am and rapidly slipped chains and Kryptonite bike locks through the handles on the door. We then chained ourselves to each other, forming a somewhat unseemly pile of bodies on the pavement of London’s most exclusive shopping street.
The bizarre multi-limbed organism then set up a chant of “TAKE IT BACK TO SARAWAK” (interspersed with cries of “oy, get off my fucking leg”). In true British fashion most passers by walked straight past pretending that this was a perfectly ordinary sight for a Monday morning - the police took it somewhat differently. However they did little other than warn us that we were blocking a right of way, and at one point inexplicably appeared to be stopping all traffic in Piccadilly (in a sympathy action?).
After an hour and a half the special diplomatic unit arrived with monster bolt cutters and swooped, needlessly shoving people about. As usual, though, even the meatheads of the London constabulary were broadly sympathetic. Their tolerance became somewhat more strained at Vine Street police station when they found that we insisted on giving our adopted names and were fully prepared to stay overnight and face the magistrate the following morning.
We had been hoping to keep our adopted names so that we could all come to face charges in solidarity with our Dayak names. However after 5 hours in London's most crowded and generally disgusting police cells the police gave up and released us all without charges. This means that although hundreds of people have been arrested in the past 10 months in Britain's rapidly radicalising and growing environment movement, not one person has yet been sentenced. Several of us had never been arrested before and left empowered and prepared for the next action.
George Marshall (LRAG)