The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement declared victory on Thursday in its years-long campaign against corporate security giant G4S.
“In a major win for human rights activism against corporate complicity, the world’s largest private security company Allied Universal, which owns G4S, has decided to sell all its remaining business in apartheid Israel,” BDS said in a statement, adding:
“This follows years of an effective #StopG4S campaign waged by the BDS movement for Palestinian rights.”
The BDS campaign against G4S was launched in 2012 by Palestinian prisoners’ rights and human rights organizations to support the major hunger strike waged then by Palestinian political prisoners.
According to BDS, the pressure “led to high-profile divestment from G4S by the Church of Sweden, the United Methodist Church, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a Kuwaiti investment fund, UN agencies, trade unions, universities, and restaurant chains, among others, compelling the company in 2016 to divest from Israel’s prison system, military checkpoints and illegal settlements. Yet the company remained invested in Policity.”
Major #BDS victory: world's largest security firm G4S is divesting completely from apartheid Israel by selling its shares in the police training academy!
Investing in apartheid is always unethical; now it's financially reckless too. #ShutDownNationhttps://t.co/SQRIOJzQjr
— BDS movement (@BDSmovement) June 1, 2023
BDS has accused the company of a long, violent record of human rights abuses against Palestinians, as well as prisoners, migrants, and other communities worldwide, and has demanded it ends all business in Israel.
The BDS movement urged to intensify pressure on “other corporate criminals to make them respect their human rights obligations and stop profiting from oppression and injustice.”
“We’ve won here, but our work is far from over. Now is the time to intensify BDS campaigns against Israel’s regime of apartheid and settler colonialism, and against corporations and institutions that remain complicit in these crimes,” the movement added.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
