Last night the Metropolitan Police contacted the Palestine Coalition threatening to effectively ban our planned protest today. They indicated their intention to ban the protest from virtually the whole of central London including Whitehall and the entire area around Parliament and that anyone protesting for Palestine within these areas would be at risk of arrest.
The reason given by the police is that there is a menorah located in Trafalgar Square, grotesquely conflating protest with terrorism and implying that the Palestinian community and others wishing to protest in support of their rights are an inherent threat to Jewish people.
While this is just the latest incident in the use of repressive police powers to target those speaking out for Palestinian rights, had the ban been imposed as the police originally intended, it would have marked a major escalation of attacks on freedom of expression and assembly. It also would have been a new low in attempts to demonise and criminalise support for Palestinian rights. This would have played into the false presentation of support for Palestinian rights as something that is in opposition to concerns for the safety of Jews and other minority communities, a concern which we share and have always affirmed.
As it stands, following significant pressure, the police have conceded that our protest can go ahead at the Ministry of Justice – a key target for our demands and those of the hunger strikers – rather than at Downing Street.
Preventing a protest at the seat of government power still amounts to a dangerous precedent and in the coming days we will have more to say about this and other discriminatory attempts to silence protests for Palestine, including the latest plans to criminalise chants and slogans. But today, at this critical juncture, what matters most is that we raise our voices in solidarity with the 8 imprisoned activists currently on hunger strike in British prisons, several of whom have now been hospitalised.
We will not be distracted from that goal.
We thank all of the activists, those from the Palestinian, Jewish and Muslim communities, trade unionists, human rights, civil liberties and faith organisations, MPs and members of the London Assembly and House of Lords who contacted the Metropolitan Police to demand that our protest be allowed to proceed.
Join us at 6pm, today at the Ministry of Justice, 102 Petty France, London SW1H 9AJ.
Palestine Solidarity Campaign Palestinian Forum in Britain
Friends of Al-Aqsa
Stop the War Coalition
Muslim Association of Britain
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament