On this episode of Going Underground, we firstly speak to Malia Bouattia, the first female black Muslim president of the National Union of Students (NUS). She discusses the Black Lives Matter protests that have spread across the world after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, reforms that need to be made to decolonize the British curriculum and increase national education on Britain’s colonial history, Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer’s condemnation of protesters who brought down the statue of slave trader Edward Colston, her demand for the Labour Party to have an unapologetic and uncompromising anti-racist stance, reforms needed to give more opportunities to BAME students in universities and schools, demands to defund the police, and more!
Finally, we speak to UN Special Rapporteur on Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association Clement Voule about police brutality against Black Lives Matter protesters. He discusses why the coronavirus pandemic should not completely limit freedoms of assembly and protest, whether it was right for the police in the UK to charge at protesters on horses, actions the UN has taken following police brutality against protesters in the US, his belief that governments and authorities haven’t engaged in enough dialogue with protesters, the assault and arrest of journalists covering the US George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests, and more!
