Farmers Movement Archive

Farmers, students in UK protest against Indian agri laws

London: Hundreds of Sikh farmers in the Midlands joined a car rally outside the Consulate General of India in Birmingham on Saturday, whilst dozens of students at the Oxford University also held a protest to show solidarity with protesting farmers protesting in India. The British Sikhs farmers arrived in tractors, trucks and lorries to join Punjabi families in cars and on motorbikes who descended on the Consulate waving orange, yellow and “farmers’ flags”, blasting Punjabi music, beeping and causing gridlock on the roads. They arrived in convoy from places like Derby, Coventry, Leicester, Yorkshire and Northampton, despite Birmingham and most of these places having a high number of Covid-19 cases and being in the toughest regional tier of lockdown restrictions. Around 2,000 protesters, including the elderly and children, gathered outside the Consulate setting off orange, yellow and green smoke flares and holding placards saying “We are farmers, not terrorists”, and “Farmers lives matter”. Many of the protesters criticised UK PM Boris Johnson for his comments in the UK Parliament last week when he said: “We have serious concerns about what is happening between India and Pakistan” in response to MPTanmanjeet Singh Dhesi’s request to convey the anxieties of British Sikhs about the Indian farmers. Sixty students attended the protest, organised by the Oxford India Society and Oxford South Asian Society, which took place in University Parks, Oxford, featuring performances of poetry. The Oxford India Society said in a statement: “The Oxford protest is in unequivocal solidarity with the farmers who have been protesting for the last few months in India. The farmers primary demand is the repeal of the three new farm laws. Our solidarity is all the more necessary considering the undemocratic nature in which the laws were passed in Parliament, with no complete consultation stage and a denial of a vote by division amidst chaos (only a voice vote was conducted, with the Opposition unable to record dissent). Some participants in the protest would also like to highlight this as part of a broader trend of anti-democratic acts by the Indian government.” Last week Rawalpindi-born Lord Singh of Wimbledon again raised the farmers’ protests in the House of Lords saying: “The Prime Minister’s visit to India next month has the potential for increased trade with the subcontinent. Can the minister assure the House that any plans to increase food imports from India will respect the human rights of small farmers already reeling from new laws allowing big business to dictate commodity prices?” Lord True, minister of state at the Cabinet Office, replied: “I will not go into the specifics of negotiations with India. The objective of Her Majesty’s Government is to extend free trade agreements as widely as we may, because we believe free trade is one of the greatest sources of the uplifting of poverty...ever devised.”

The Times of India

2020-12-14

Chandigarh