Scottish TUC votes to support BDS against G4S

Scottish Trades Union Congress voted on Tuesday 15th April to heed the Palestinian call to join the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign against G4S, the British-Danish ‘secure outsourcing group’. They called specifically for the Scottish Government to cancel G4S’s new contract for tagging of offenders and endorsed the UK StopG4S Campaign.

The motion passed at STUC reads:

“That this Congress notes that the ‘World Social Forum – Free Palestine’ agreed to make the next annual Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, April 17th 2013, a worldwide day of action against security company G4S. In Occupied Palestine, G4S is involved in human rights abuses and violations of international law through the services it provides to the Israeli Occupation Forces, including providing or operating:

• equipment for Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza;
• security system of Ktziot prison, central control room of Megido prison, central control room for Ofer prison compound and security services to Damon prison, which are all facilities detaining Palestinian political prisoners;
• equipment for West Bank Israeli Police headquarters in the highly contested E1 area; and
• security services to businesses, including banks and supermarkets, in illegal West Bank settlements and in East Jerusalem.

Congress believes G4S’s activities in the Israeli Prison Service constitute a breach of international law, including Articles 49 and 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and that they are complicit in violations of the human rights of Palestinian prisoners, including children.

Congress notes that G4S in Norway was petitioned by trade unions and others, calling for it to cease activities complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestine and mistreatment of Palestinians.

Congress therefore:

• demands that G4S withdraws forthwith from all activities that contribute to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem and to its denial of human rights to Palestinians;
•  calls on the General Council and the trade union movement in Scotland to raise these points, through every possible channel, with G4S;
• resolves that until G4S concedes to these demands, it will be a target of the STUC’s policy of Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions;
• calls on the Scottish Government to cancel G4S’s new contract for tagging of offenders; and
• endorses the UK StopG4S Campaign.”