Protest group Led by Donkeys has received more than £27,000 in compensation for a banner unlawfully taken by the Greater London Authority and subsequently destroyed.
The banner, which read “Yes, it’s a genocide”, was seized during a peaceful protest in Parliament Square. It was taken as part of the UK’s authoritarian war on speech and protest against Israel’s crimes against humanity. It was later destroyed by waste management company Veolia, which has now paid compensation of £27,216. The firm claimed it had destroyed the banner because storing it was a health and safety issue.
Protest group face coordinated repression
Led by Donkeys co-founder Ben Stewart pointed to the findings of legal experts and genocide scholars that Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza is categorically a genocide – and to the UK government’s repression of anti-genocide speech:
The Parliament Square banner was in collaboration with one of the world’s leading genocide scholars, but still the authorities threw process out the window and simply seized and destroyed our property. Pursuing compensation was never about the money, it was about defending space to protest Israel’s war crimes.
Palestine protests are treated differently in Britain to all other forms of activism. Direct action is regarded as terrorism and words on a placard are rendered illegal. Over the years we’ve delivered banners, put up billboards and done guerrilla projections across the country, but the only time our equipment has been seized and destroyed was when it related to Palestine.
The Index of Repression is calculated by the well-known academic research group Forensic Architecture and the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC). It has identified almost a thousand examples of coordinated “institutional and enforcement” repression of UK pro-Palestinian speech and protest.
This is often driven by, and coordinated with, UK Israel lobby groups — in particular notorious pro-apartheid lawfare group ‘UK Lawyers for Israel’.
Rather than repealing his predecessor’s avalanche of legislation designed to protect Israel from protest, new PM Andy Burnham has filled his cabinet with even more Israel lobbyists and signalled he will go further than authoritarian Keir Starmer.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
