Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

June 14, 2016

Orlando shooter worked for G4S, human rights abuser with Arizona border contract

Wackenhut bus, now G4S, at Three Points, Arizona, at the border of the
Tohono O'odham Nation. Photo Brenda Norrell
Orlando shooter was an employee of G4S, abuser of Arizona border migrants, prisoners and Palestinians

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News
Dutch translation by Alice Holemans at NAIS 

Protesters at G4S in Tucson, Arizona.

Censored News sends condolences to the families who lost loved ones in the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida.

The security firm G4S, known around the world for human rights abuses, now admits that Omar Mateen, the shooter in the mass murder in Orlando, was an employee for the past nine years.
G4S is based in London and has the US contract at the Arizona border to detain and transport migrants. G4S is known globally for the abuse of prisoners, including Palestinians. US Customs and Border Patrol issued the contract to G4S, regardless of its global history of the abuse of prisoners.
The contract earlier went to Wackenhut Transportation until G4S bought Wackenhut Transportation.
Earlier, Wackenhut split into two corporations for maximum profiteering from the misery of migrants.
The two companies are Wackenhut Transportation and GEO. GEO is the private prison operator responsible for imprisoning migrants for profit in abusive prisons in the Southwest and along the US border. Wackenhut has a long history of oppression and abuse, including earlier when it had the security contract for Peabody Coal on Black Mesa in Arizona,
where Navajos have spent 40 years fighting forced relocation.
Under pressure, the Gates dropped their huge share of G4S in 2014.
The Guardian writes:
Human rights groups have also criticised G4S for providing services to Israeli prisons holding Palestinian detainees. In 2014, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said it had sold its stake in G4S.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/13/g4s-shares-plunge-after-orlando-killer-is-named-as-employee



Censored News Photo 2
TUCSON --(June 29, 2011) At around 2 p.m. today, community members burst uninvited into the Tucson offices of private security firm G4S and declared in no uncertain terms their opposition to the company’s profiteering at the expense of immigrant communities in Tucson, across the nation and throughout the world. Incensed by G4S’ role in promoting the criminalization of immigrants and the expansion of the private prison industry, the protestors entered the G4S office complex, delivered a letter to company representatives and unfurled a banner reading “G4S: Prison profiteering destroys communities.”

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