Wow, what an evening!

On my way home tonight from seeing my good friend Leke Aerosoul DJ at the Kirk Originals Xmas Party on Regents Street I just happened to be in Oxford Circus when 200 Congolese protestors were on the train I was on trying to get on, but tube staff and the police decided to stop the train and evacuate the station. I hung around and recorded proceedings being the citizen journalist that I am.

I quickly learned that they had been protesting at Whitehall for the past 3 days and it had been largely ignored by the press. They were protesting over the reelection of president Joseph Kabila, who they believe has been rigged and that he is a pawn of the West because he allows them to strip the country of Coltran – the mineral essential for the production of mobile phones and computer chips

I managed to catch the protest on my phone – apologies for the poor quality I didn’t have my camera with me

I find it amazing that they had got no press about these protests, I bumped into a freelance journalist there who said over the past few days the only people that have been there is The Guardian. BBC News have now reported about what happened tonight but not about the reasons for their protests, only about the station being evacuated

If not for me being on this tube by accident I never would have known about the protests. I heard about the Coltran mining in the Cargo but not about these protests…….needless to say I’m pretty pissed off that this has been ignored by the press. I’m very reactionist with this website – I’m now going to do an article on the coltran mining soon the come in the society section as well as an article on press now in the networked era and the power of new citizen journalism and sites like Blottr which empowers citizen journalism – I added my photos and information to the article on there about what happened tonight – http://www.blottr.com/london/breaking-news/police-close-oxford-circus-after-congolese-protest-disturbance

Like I said – more information on coltran and journalism in the networked era soon

Until then

Tendai