Right to Protest March 2007
Report following Sussex Assistant Chief Constable's Investigation - Press Release.
Following Sussex Police's complicity in criminalising peaceful protest at EDO and their outrageous attempts to counter local accusations of over-policing last year's demonstration against Israeli aggression in Lebanon many local activist groups have responded to a call from Sussex Action for Peace to hold a 'Right to Protest' march on March 17th in Brighton.
DEMONSTRATION
Churchill Square Saturday 17th March 12 noon Called by: Sussex Action for Peace and Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign Freedom to Protest Coalition includes: Abolish Working Links, Brighton Unemployed Workers Centre, Critical Mass Bike Ride, Green Party, Keep our NHS Public, No Borders, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Respect, Save Titnore Woods, Smash EDO, Socialist Worker Party, Sussex Action for Peace, Squatters, Workers Liberty In the last few years the state has been attacking civil liberties in the UK. Successive Labour governments have introduced powers for police to impose conditions on any gathering, took steps to introduce an Identity database and ID cards, criminalised protest in Parliament Square and other key sites, limited the right to trial by jury, sanctioned the use of house arrest and extended the period of time that the police can hold a suspect before charging them. This political climate is having its effect in Brighton. In 2005, the police colluded with US arms manufacturer EDO MBM to ban any significant protests against them in Moulsecoomb by attempting to impose a High Court injunction. Meanwhile, marches that took place against EDO in town were met with provocative and heavy-handed policing. Despite legal intimidation from EDO, backed up by unlawful and unjustified arrests, the company lost the case and had to pay millions of pounds in legal costs. In 2006 a march called by Sussex Action for Peace in response to Israel's attack on Lebanon was met with intimidating over-policing which included filming babies in pushchairs and the confiscation of a placard which equated the Israeli flag with a Swastika. The police justified such tactics on the overtly political grounds that the protest was ‘anti-Semitic’. They falsely accused the march of being deliberately planned to provoke the ‘Jewish community’ and started an investigation on demonstrators. Yet they had to drop their investigation, and, following several complaints, Chief Superintendent Kevin Moore is now being investigated for professional misconduct. Of course, the police’s assumption that all Jews necessarily support Israel was itself anti-Semitic! All local protests are now under threat. The police routinely try to push demonstrations on to the pavement, to hide them down side streets with the excuse that they ‘disrupt shopping’ in the town centre. Events such as Critical Mass are randomly obstructed by overzealous and petty policing. Sussex University has now attempted to suppress students’ protests with an injunction and are trying to get the students to agree to a 'protest protocol'. The purpose of this demonstration is to reassert our freedom to protest and to be visible when and where it is necessary, despite the desire of the state to suppress dissent.
The following video shows the over-policing on the Lebanon demo last year:
If you do not have Flash installed you can see the Lebanon demo video here
Chief Supt Kevin Moore is currently being investigated for professional misconduct following the accusations of racism.
From the Argus: accusations of over policing From the Argus: following public accusations of over policing
Israel Nazi flag
Waving a flag equating an Israeli flag to a Swastika is absolutely fucking disgusting. It's an innacurrate comparison and completely insensitive considering the history of the Jewish people. I think the police to overzealously cover protests, but that symbol is borderline anti-semitic, and it was right to confiscate it
Re: Israeli Nazi Flag
While I completely sympathise with the fact that such a flag could be quite offensive to a lot of Jewish people, I have to admit I think the previous poster is a bit mistaken in saying that it is an inaccurate comparison, and that such mistaken views do lots to distort understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian situation - hence I feel the need to respond. What the Israeli government is visting on the Palestinian population is an authoritarian, barbaric and tyrannical denial of civil rights based purely on ethno-cultural distinctions - in illegally-occupied territories, innocent civilians are denied the right to travel, denied access to water, denied access to their communities' food resources, and denied access to their communities' sites of sensitive cultural heritage, and violently dehumanised and brutalised by military and state institutions on the way, and simply for being Palestinian. And considering the history of the Jewish people, this is a tragedy and vastly contradictory.
Flags such as that in the video can in certain circumstances draw attention to that tragedy and that contradiction, and challenge many inaccurate assumptions about the Israeli-Palestinian situation. The Jewish people's troubled past does not make it wrong or or anti-semitic to question the actions of the Israeli government, any more than it is racist to question the current actions of any other national goverment. The unfortunate assumption that it is insensitive to allow any questioning of anything the Israeli government does in the name of self-defence allows hardly any debate or objective criticism in many areas over their treatment of the Palestinian population, and this in itself has given them a position closer to impunity, and distorted perception of the situation in the Occupied Territories such that it is not seen as the startling disaster and humanitarian tragedy comparable with Apartheid South Africa that it is.
I don't know any empathetic human beings who would disagree that the Jewish people's history is catastrophic and should be treated with sensitivity. However, this does not give the Israeli government teh freedom to do whatever they like in pursuit of "national interest", nor does it mean we cannot allow questioning of their actions.
You can see a really good article about this issue by a Jewish-American songwriter in the 13/2/07 post here: http://www.songwritersnotebook.blogspot.com/
Re: Israeli Nazi Flag
Having seen the banner discussed I completely agree that it should not have been taken and that the comparison is legit although slightly exagerated. It was, rather than a flag, a banner with a very small picture of a Star of David flag alongside a swastica that many would not have even noticed but the point was it allowed the police to strengthen their clain that the march needed over-policing because it was racist - a claim which we all deny totally.
Jews
Im a Jew, and I was offended.