Over 100,000 Anti-Poverty Protestors Pack Edinburgh to Wake-Up G8 Leaders
Today over 100,000 demonstrators, led by the two top leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Britain and Scotland, will join the Make Poverty History rally in Edinburgh, Scotland, to put pressure on G8 leaders to eradicate poverty in Africa.
The UK-based campaign Make Poverty History, which is made up of hundreds of leading faith groups, charities, trade unions and celebrities across the world, was launched in January this year. It urged the UK and other world leaders to adopt three principles to solve the world poverty problem.
The three principles are "Trade Justice", "Drop the Debt" as well as "More and Better Aid". Throughout six-months of continuous lobbying and the efforts of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, some fruits have already been borne.
In mid-June, the G7 finance ministers have agreed with Blair’s G8 plans to offer 100 percent debt relief to some 18 of the poorest countries in the world. The deal is widely seen as a great breakthrough, but campaigners still expect the world leaders to move further to protect the less prosperous in the world.
The rally today began at 11a.m. (10.00 GMT) at The Meadows - a lush green park near Edinburgh University with enough room to accommodate 200,000.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, and Keith O'Brien, Scotland's cardinal, will lead the mass rally.
"There is suddenly a real chance - the sort that comes but once in a generation - for Africa to reverse its three decades of stagnation," Murphy-O'Connor has said.
The demonstrators all wear white and march around the city. They will lay out giant letters spelling the slogan Make Poverty History. From the sky, the city is expected look like it is wrapped in a giant white band.
One-minute silence will be observed at 3p.m. (14.00 GMT) to remember the thousands of people who die every day of preventable diseases and church bells will ring out across the city to mark its end.
Gordon Brown, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, will address a separate Christian Aid rally later in the evening.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in close alliance with Brown, wants to see fresh action on global poverty and climate change to come out of the G8 summit.
"I am hopeful we will get there. It is a big ambition to set, but if you don't set big ambitions you don't achieve anything at all," said Blair in a debate with young people on MTV music television, aired on Friday.
Scotland's First Minister Jack McConnell, a member of Blair's Labour party, told BBC radio, "This is the great moral cause of our age. This (poverty in Africa) is the great injustice in our world."
Centred at Britain, the powerful force from the Make Poverty History campaigners has even spread across the whole world. Ten Live 8 anti-poverty concerts from Tokyo to outside Toronto will coincide with the march to mark the start of a one-week long protest as the G8 leaders will meet at the Gleneagles Hotel 40 miles northwest of Edinburgh from 6th-8th July.
Richard Bennett, chairman of Make Poverty History said, "The Live 8 concerts are going to reach billions of people. That means the basic messages are going to reach even further than we could have dared hoped."
