09 August 2011, London, United Kingdom [ANN/BUC/SEC staff] Seventh-day Adventist Youth leaders in London will hold two peace rallies this week in response to ongoing rampant looting, which began Saturday night following a community protest of a police shooting.
Youth leaders will hold the rally in Tottenham at the Seven Sisters Station today, Tuesday, August 9, from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., and again tomorrow, Wednesday, August 10, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The event, sponsored by the church’s South England Conference, will be used to promote peace. Participants will distribute Peace pledge cards, which ask people to sign the cards to promote peace in their neighborhood.
Since this morning’s announcement, conference officials downgraded the size of the event for safety reasons. A mid-day statement said, “any outreach or community service should only be within members own areas, they should not travel across town, and only venture out under direct instruction from local church leadership who directly understand the situation.”
Looting across numerous neighborhoods of London, and even in cities as far away Birmingham and Liverpool, continued to flare into Monday night.
The violence began Saturday night following a community protest of a police shooting last week in Tottenham. Local resident Mark Duggan was killed, and a police officer was shot, but not killed, in the incident, news agencies reported.
Tottenham, as well as other neighborhoods where violence first erupted, has often been associated with high unemployment and tensions with police. Copycat crimes soon swept across multiple neighborhoods and cities, the BBC reported.
The BBC reported that Prime Minister David Cameron returned from a vacation in Italy to address the situation and asked that Parliament be recalled, a move that last occurred in 2002.
“We are sadden by the events that have occurred in Tottenham,” Sam Davis, president of the Adventist Church in South England, said this morning. “The loss of Mark Duggan’s life has mobilized many in the community to rightly ask for answers to what took place that led to this young man’s loss of life. However, this can never justify the wanton violence and destruction of property, looting and vandalism that followed the protest.”
In the mid-day statement, Davis said the conference’s Youth and Community Ministries departments were willing to join the community in the clean-up operation and are already working in one affected area to assist displaced families. [tedNEWS]
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[SEC file photo by Richard de Lisser]
tedNEWS Staff: Miroslav Pujic, director; Deana Stojkovic, editor
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