PROTESTERS set up a cage with a prisoner inside in protest over Labour’s employment of disgraced security firm G4S at its annual conference in Manchester this week.

Ironically, two real G4S guards were sent out to protect the entrance to the conference near the cage.

G4S works for the Israeli government and is involved in the country’s prisons, where Palestinians including children are kept in shocking conditions.

Human rights groups say prisoners are tortured. The “prisoner,” representing a Palestinian, was hooded and handcuffed to the cage.

Adie Mormech from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Manchester Palestine Action said: “The reality for Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli jails is in fact much worse. G4S is securing Israeli prisons inside illegally occupied Palestinian land, child prisons where numerous human rights offences have been documented as well as the Israeli military checkpoints and the apartheid wall that help confiscate land from where Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed.”

“For the Labour party and Labour-controlled councils to have so many contracts with G4S is aiding and abetting the horrors and injustice committed by the Israeli state against Palestinians every day. It has to stop.”

Manchester has an active anti-G4S campaign group which is calling on Manchester City Council to stop employing G4S for security at public buildings.

A video of the protest enactment of a Palestinian inside a G4S secured Israeli prison can be seen at: http://youtu.be/JR9A16D1xF8

peterlazenby@peoples-press.com