By SC Cook, Protesters sit in the road outside Cardiff Bay Police Station. Photo, Tom Davies
OVER 300 PROTEST IN CARDIFF ON MONDAY, OCCUPYING THE ROAD OUTSIDE CARDIFF CENTRAL POLICE STATION
THE CASES OF SARAH EVERARD AND MOHAMUD HASSAN, AND POLICE INVOLVEMENT IN BOTH, DROVE MANY PEOPLE ONTO THE STREETS
DEMONSTRATION COMES AS POLICE & CRIME BILL MOVES THROUGH PARLIAMENT, AND MORE BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTERS TARGETED BY SOUTH WALES POLICE
FURTHER EVENTS PLANNED IN CARDIFF AND LONDON TODAY.
A new movement burst onto the streets of Cardiff on Monday night, bringing together fights against multiple injustices and outrage at the Tory government, the police and an authoritarian British state.
Over 300 people came together to demand an end to violence against women, an end to police brutality and racism, and the right to protest freely.
There were several names which rang out from the crowd as the demonstration went into the night: Siyanda Mngaza, Sarah Everard, Mohamud Hassan, Wenjing Lin, Mouayed Bashir and Christopher Kapessa.
These were the names of women killed by men, women of colour jailed by the state, and young black men who many protesters assert have been killed and failed by the police.
The demonstration was also in response to an attack on the right to protest itself, which had been brought into sharp focus by the images of women being pushed faced down, hands behind their back, by uniformed cops who broke up a vigil for Sarah Everard on Clapham Common just days earlier.
This prompted an angry backlash against the police, and turned attention to the Tory government’s Police and Crime Bill, which gives the state sweeping new powers to punish protest and civil disobedience. One placard simply read: Fuck the Tories
As the crowd spontaneously occupied the road in Cardiff on Monday evening, they erupted in a loud cheer as a sign calling Home Secretary Priti Patel an ‘bell end’ was held up.
A woman called Lily said she had come after seeing what had happened in London on Saturday. “As a woman of colour you can’t just sit at home and just see this kind of thing. It upsets you, I’m angry.. I wanna be here with everyone.”
She said that despite the issue being so widespread, women were ignored in school if they reported assault and this carried on into university and throughout life. No women she knew had gone to the police after being assaulted, because they didn’t trust them to take it seriously. “You hear stories of people just being ignored.”
Lily saw the protest as a continuation of the Black Lives Matter movement which erupted last summer. “We are seeing an amalgamation of BLM and now the women also, there are a few different groups here tonight.”
Another woman, Lara, was on her way home from nursery with her child but lived locally and decided to stop by.
She described the horror of finding out that Mohamud Hassan had left Cardiff Bay Police Station, just near her home, with injuries to his face and blood stained clothes shortly before he died on January 9th.
“It’s shocked our community a lot. And then with what’s happened with Sarah Everard as well, that was a copper off duty,” she said, “and obviously I’m raising a daughter as well.”
A MET police officer faces trial for the abduction and murder of Sarah Everard.
Lara described coming into contact with police as a sixteen year old who attended raves and saw them being broken up by cops with batons. .
“They need to be defunded, the infrastructure needs to change somehow because it’s a brotherhood. That’s the bit that worries me as a woman… that guy [accused of murdering Sarah Everard] was caught flashing two days before and they knew that. They knew his position as an armed officer and they let him go.”
“I think everyone’s really shocked and disturbed, but to me it’s just an extension of what they did to Mohamud.”
In the crowd, a woman shouted into the megaphone to cheers when she called for police abolition: “I am sick and I am tired of people I know and don’t know being hurt, because these people don’t deserve it.”
“None of us deserve it, and someone will hit us and that will be too late. I want everyone to feel the anger because until we gather in the masses, nothing is going to change.”
As the crowd occupied the road, another speaker got them to chant ‘I am a revolutionary’ while a representative from Black Lives Matter said the police protected a failed status quo which had to be dismantled.
At one point a young women went to confront the police directly as the crowd chanted ‘the sisters, united, will never be defeated’
The name of Siyanda Mngaza rang out several times, with shouts of ‘Free Siyanda’ and ‘self defence is no offence,’ in reference to the 4 year imprisonment given to the young woman, whose family say was defending herself against a racialised attack whilst camping in Mid Wales.
As people collectively took a knee in the middle of the road, the lawyer Hillary Brown, who is representing both the Hassan and Mngaza family, said the police across three Welsh forces – South Wales, Gwent and Dyfed Powys – should hang their head in shame over the cases of Mohamud Hassan, Christopher Kapessa, Mouayed Bashir and Siyanda Mngaza.
The protest went into the night. Adam Johannes, from Cardiff People’s Assembly, was cheered on as he relayed the story of the heroic Black Chartist leader William Cuffay:
“The son of a West Indian Tailor, the grandson of an African who was taken from Africa by force in the slave trade,” he shouted, explaining how the Chartist movement had defended Cuffay against attacks from the establishment, who were racist then just as they are now.
“It’s important to say that immigrants have not only participated in our movement for freedom on this island, but they have led the movements. So we wouldn’t have any freedom at all if it wasn’t for the contribution of immigrant activists.”
The mood was upbeat and angry as people made a stand against what must be seen as a serious turn to a more authoritarian state.
Elected politicians were absent, with the notable exception of outgoing Plaid MS Bethan Sayed, who said she had to come and make a stand against sexual violence & the threat to protest. “I know we’re in a difficult time in the pandemic, but people are incensed not only at how police treated these women on Saturday, but Mohamud and others who have suffered at the hands of the police in South Wales.”
There were no union banners at the protest, something one BLM activist said they hoped would change for future gatherings.
The event passed without major incident, but a day after the protest, it emerged that more people had been subjected to home visits by detectives and threatened with arrest for shining a phone torch at police at a demonstration in January.
In a protest in London, BLM UK reported that police had started to ‘crack down’ on demonstrators.
Late on Tuesday the news came through that as expected, the Police and Crime bill had passed its first reading in the House of Commons.
Responding to the news, Black Lives Matter Cardiff and Vale, who have been at the heart of recent events, said “We need to get organised. They will never win,” while Sister’s Uncut, who fronted Saturday’s event in Clapham and who have been organising daily protests since, said ” The Tories aren’t backing down and neither will we… We will fight in our thousands at every stage; we’re just getting started.”
Many of the people who went on Monday will have felt that they were at the beginning of something, not the end. A fresh protest has been called for today, Wednesday 17th March at 6pm outside Cardiff central station.
