Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
On Saturday 13 June Edinburgh Leith Festival Gala Day will be sponsored by Veolia Water, a company complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid and colonisation of Palestine.
Leith Festival organisers have not responded formally to the Scottish PSC appeal to refuse any association with a company that is:
• involved in Israel’s tramway project that links illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank to Jerusalem
• directly implicated in maintaining illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)
• playing a key role in Israel’s attempt to make its annexation of Palestinian East Jerusalem irreversible
Veolia is actively involved in furthering Israel’s violations of international law and the continuing dispossession of the Palestinian people. Veolia is using Leith Festival as a cynical public relations exercise – the same company that violates international law in Palestine, also discharged raw sewage into the Firth of Forth (fined £13,500). Artists for Gaza have also written to the Leith Festival and also have not had any formal reply.
Members of the Leith Festival board of directors are sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinian people. Words, however, are not enough. Leith shouldn’t be going against the world-wide rejection of Veolia for its involvement in Israeli crimes. Veolia
• lost the eight-year, $4.5 billion dollar contract to operate Stockholm county’s subway
• lost a 700 million contract in Bordeaux in France
• was told to get lost by Sligo and Galway councils in Ireland
• is losing as much as $7.5 billion in lost contracts
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Write to Leith Festival and urge them to:
• refuse Veolia sponsorship and associating Leith Festival and the city of Edinburgh in Veolia involvement in crimes against the Palestinian people
• accept the Scottish PSC request to deliver a presentation to them on Veolia and Israel’s criminal occupation, apartheid and colonisation of Palestine
• Join Scottish PSC, Artist for Gaza and others in leafleting the Leith Festival Gala Day, Saturday 13 June – email campaign@scottishpsc.org.uk for details.
Leith Festival contact details (please copy your correspondence to Scottish PSC at campaign@scottishpsc.org.uk
office@leithfestival.com
gordon.munro@leithfestival.com (chair of the Leith Festival board)
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)