Postcard handed to museum goers
Report by Isvestia London November 2011
Over fifteen Campaigners for Palestinian Rights were out in force for over two hours on Saturday 5 November protesting outside the Natural History Museum in London. Many of the campaigners are actively involved in the increasingly successful campaign across the UK and throughout the world to exclude Veolia from winning local authority contracts.
The French multinational Veolia is the official sponsor of the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Museum and its corporate logo appears prominently on the posters and publicity materials. Veolia is a company that is deeply complicit in and that directly profits from Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Campaigners approached exhibition-goers to give them information about Veolia and to encourage them to fill in the official feedback forms to protest at the Museum’s decision to appoint Veolia as exhibition sponsor.
Hundreds of general postcards about Veolia’s activities in the West Bank and Jerusalem, as well as special leaflets about the sponsorship of the Wildlife Photography exhibition, were handed out by Palestinian rights campaigners and dozens of conversations took place as exhibition-goers wanted to know more. Many people expressed their thanks to the campaigners for the information about Veolia and expressed their disappointment that Veolia should be chosen by the museum as Exhibition sponsor. The positive reception from so many members of the public was a boost for the Palestinian Rights Campaigners. There was a boost from another quarter; amongst a group of British Army soldiers who were jogging by the museum, one gave the victory sign and shouted ‘Free Palestine’ !
Palestinian Rights campaigners will be continuing their protests every two weeks at the Natural History Museum in London.
For more information about Veolia and its activities please go to www.bigcampiagn.org/veolia/
Special flyer distributed to museum goers
The BBC R4 FOOC re the JLR [run by Veolia], was shamefully biased – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15590267
On the reporter of the BBC programme on the JLR:
“The author demonstrates his shocking ignorance about the history of Jerusalem, about international law, and about present-day Jerusalem with passages that alternately suggest that Israel seized, settled and segregated Jerusalem.”
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=4&x_outlet=12&x_article=2146
If you wish to complain to the BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms
Possible points for complaining:
* Failed to make clear that the main objection is that the JLR ties in the illegal settlements more firmly to Israel, perpetuating the land grab that the settlements represent. No mention of the building and operation of the JLR by Israel declared illegal by the UN Human Rights Council, with the support of UK and France.
* The tram a “project of unification”: for unification read annexation
* West Jerusalem is described as quite different in atmosphere, culture and language. No mention is made of the fact that the ethnic cleansing of the large population of Palestinians from West Jerusalem in 1948/49 is largely responsible for this
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