Microsoft hosts emergency press conference after protesters ‘storm a building’
Microsoft president Brad Smith organized an impromptu press conference on Tuesday afternoon, just hours after the demonstrators had access to a building at the company’s headquarters and organized a sit-in demonstration inside his office.
Sitting on the edge of his office, in the office which had been occupied by demonstrators earlier during the day, Smith addressed a group of journalists and viewers on a live flow. “Obviously, it was an unusual day,” he said, the trembling camera speaking.
The demonstrators were part of the Nozure group for apartheid, which on several occasions this year interrupted Microsoft’s public presentations to demand that the company reside in all contracts with the Israeli government and army.
Smith said Microsoft is “determined to guarantee that his human rights principles and contractual service conditions are confirmed in the Middle East”. He said the company launched an investigation earlier this month after Tutor reported that Microsoft’s Cloud Azure platform was used for monitoring Palestinians. Smith said Microsoft did not agree with certain conclusions of the report, but that others justified the investigation.
“We work every day to go to the bottom of what’s going on, and we will,” said Smith.
An organizer for No Azure for apartheid, Abdo Mohamed, earlier in the day The penis That the employees of Microsoft Riki Fameli and Anna Hattle were part of the demonstration. They were joined by former employees of Microsoft Vaniya Agrawal, Hossam Nasr and Joe Lopez.
Smith said that seven people in total were involved in today’s demonstrations, two of which are Microsoft employees. People were kidnapped by Redmond police, he said.
“When seven people do what they have done today, take a building by storm, occupy an office, lock other people out of the office, the factory listening devices – even in coarse form, in the form of phones, mobile phones hidden under sofas and behind books – it’s not OK,” said Smith. “When they are asked to leave and they refused, it’s not ok.”
