A protestor has died at the G20 protests in London.

I have been keeping a close watch on BBC and Indymedia to see how it is being reported.

I have little hope of finding out what actually happened - especially from the BBC who, along with most other major broadcasters, absolutely revel in being as biased as possible on these occasions.

As it goes, the BBC first reported that…

“One man collapsed and died at the protest, police said, and at least 87 arrests were made.”

This was later changed to…

…the circumstances behind the death of a man who was involved in the protests has been referred to The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).

Police said the man, thought to be in his 40s, died on Wednesday evening after bottles were thrown at him and he collapsed.

Furthermore…

Scotland Yard said he was found unconscious near the Bank of England on Wednesday evening and the London Ambulance Service took him to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

IPCC investigators will examine CCTV footage and attend the post-mortem examination.

They don’t seem to be interested in asking why some people saw fit to report it to Independent Police Complaints Commission. It must be official ‘non-information’ in the double-plus ungood category.

Someone on Indymedia said…

“The circumstances are currently unclear, but he died inside a police cordon (or kettle) where police had crushed and baton charged protesters.”

The police may be telling the truth or they may not be. But don’t hold great hopes for the ‘Independent’ police complaints commission report. Remember Jean Charles De Menezes?

Here is how this is all probably going to go if previous similar events are anything to go by..

1. There will be initial sympathy for the deceased and his family, followed by a series of rightwing lunatics in the press writing ‘it was his own fault/shouldn’t have been there in the first place/lousy malcontent’ sort of articles.
2. The police report will take so long to come that if it transpires that the police were out of order and the report says that, it will be so far from now that any indignation that remains in the majority of the public will have long vanished behind the next football match/royal event or other assorted nonsense.

This is a very short article and I just want to make one small point and ask one simple question on more general issues. The small point is that yes, there are lunatics out there but in any form of sane society the worst, greediest, most egotistical and bloodthirsty ones wouldn’t be the ones controlling it from inside the most beautiful buildings.

The second is that if they are ‘our’ representatives truly fighting to work for the interests of the people of the world, why do they need so much protection from the very people they claim to represent?