It really says it all that today’s protests in London by UK-based Iraqis merit just a footnote at the bottom of a Guardian round-up of the latest series of ‘anti-war’ marches
While the comfortably-off British middle-classes make their usual calls for nothing to be done about the fascist regime in Baghdad its victims show their support for Tony Blair’s position and condemn France’s line.
Unlike the Tarquin and Tabatha protesters, the Iraqi exiles won’t get much coverage in the papers so I will put it in bold here:
Hundreds of people from Britain’s Iraqi community were today protesting outside the Houses of Parliament in support of an attack on Iraq, and a petition was being delivered to the French embassy in central London to register opposition to the stance of the French president, Jacquest Chirac.
The protest coincides with the 15th anniversary of the Halabja massacre, where 5,000 Kurds were killed after the Iraqi government ordered a chemical weapons attack.
It really isn’t so difficult to work out which side to be on is it?
AFTERTHOUGHT: I’m going to moniter the media coverage on Sunday, if there is any, of this protest. It may not have been a large demo but at a time when all manner of people claim to be speaking for the Iraqi people, surely it was significant.
If there isn’t fair coverage of this demonstration then I think it is up to Blogland UK to make sure that people here and internationally get to hear about it. If the media let the protestors down I’d like to see a united front of UK bloggers to give this demo the widest possible publicity – see if we can’t play the ‘anti-war’ crowd at their own game. It would just require all the UK political blogs to post the above two paragraphs from the Guardian website.
Then if the US bloggers note it, thousands of people will have heard about this protest and we will have given the Iraqi exiles a hand in letting their voices be heard.
But let’s see what the Sunday papers come up with – if they fail I might see if I can’t live up to that “Lancastrian activist” tag for once.
