This page lists any entry on the site marked with one of the selected categories in the left hand column, most recent first. Selecting other categories will further hone this list.
La Zad puts down roots – sensing the future

La Zad puts down roots – sensing the future

We’re in the middle of the crowd. Standing some way back from the stage, watching transfixed and elated at the performance of Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp. Two trombones, two drummers, two marimbas, two electric guitars, two cellos and five other musicians blast out such a blissful riot of sound that our souls sail above...
Strip away the carapace – the Ice Age, BP, and the British Museum

Strip away the carapace – the Ice Age, BP, and the British Museum

It pushes me quickly to tears. I’m kneeling on the cold stone floor of the Great Court, legs tucked beneath me, one foot crossed under the other. I’m listening to a rendition of A Requiem to Sinking Cities – an agit-performance in the heart of the British Museum. Silent figures hold up two banners, ‘#DropBP’...
The changing wind - shedding the carbon skin

The changing wind – shedding the carbon skin

  I am cramming chocolate into your mouth. I feel the dampness of your lips against my fingertips and see the brown squares tumble into the darkness. It takes seconds to complete the task, but the time draws out, slows down. All around is mayhem. The wind makes the shrouds howl. The sound thrusts a...
Walking the Line. New Interactive Documentary

Walking the Line. New Interactive Documentary

In Italy, Azerbaijan and the UK people are fighting against the devastating impacts of import pipelines and wresting back control over their energy system. In this beautiful documentary we made with Global Motion, Re:common and Counter Balance we meet the people who live alongside the Euro-Caspian Mega Pipeline and are organising against this gargantuan piece...
Darkness Falling - 100 days in Azerbaijan

Darkness Falling – 100 days in Azerbaijan

Today the appeal trial of Leyla and Arif Yunus continues in Azerbaijan. As it does James Marriott reflects on 100 days in Azerbaijan. For over 100 days I have been away from the hum of collective life in Platform, away from the buzz of e-mails and twitter, away from the news feed darting this way...
The Management of Democracy - a report from the BP AGM 2015

The Management of Democracy – a report from the BP AGM 2015

The low hanger of the ExCeL building – the London Exhibition Centre – squats grey and devoid of windows on the northern quayside of the former Royal Victoria Dock which was closed and privatised in 1981. Despite having visited this hall for most of the BP Annual General Meetings of the past decade, the place...
Demand UK MPs speak out against Azerbaijan Repression

Demand UK MPs speak out against Azerbaijan Repression

In 100 days the European Olympics will be taking place in Baku. As stadiums are completed and flags unfurled many of the people we know in Azerbaijan are in prison. The European Games are being used to goldwash the BP-Aliyev regime. So desperate are they to host the event that, despite serious economic problems, they’re...

EBRD plan Azerbaijan loan as regime’s fiercest critic is imprisoned

One of the most famous critics of the Aliyev regime has been imprisoned in Baku. Khadija Ismayilova, an award winning investigative journalist was arrested for ‘inciting suicide’. If found guilty she faces up to seven years in prison. Ismayilova has spent years uncovering corruption in Azerbaijan, which she has traced all the way up to...
BP: stop fuelling repression in Azerbaijan

BP: stop fuelling repression in Azerbaijan

This morning I stood outside BP’s International HQ in St James’s Square, London. I was attending a solidarity action for a missing protest. We should have been supporting a similar demo in Azerbaijan’s capital but there were no banners outside BP’s offices in Baku this morning. A woman in the distinctive blue tabard of Baku’s...

Tony Blair will advise on controversial gas pipeline from Azerbaijan to Italy

Jamie Doward, Observer

Azerbaijan political prisoners list published with report’s authors on it

Press release by Bankwatch, Counter Balance and Platform For immediate release: August 19 Azerbaijan political prisoners list published with report’s authors on it London — Human rights activists in Azerbaijan published yesterday a list of 98 people (1) who are currently political prisoners in the country run by the authoritarian regime of Ilham Aliyev. Ironically,...
Human rights activist and Platform ally Rasul Jafarov arrested in Azerbaijan

Human rights activist and Platform ally Rasul Jafarov arrested in Azerbaijan

Democracy activist and Platform ally, Rasul Jafarov, was arrested and detained in Baku over the weekend. Rasul has been charged with tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship and power abuse. These are the same falsified charges that saw independent Azeri election monitor Anar Mammadli jailed for 5.5 years. Rasul’s arrest comes shortly after the prominent human rights...