An official with President Donald Trump’s administration is condemning the U.K. for arresting pro-Palestine protesters.
Europe’s relationship with free speech has always been tenuous at best, so it should come as no surprise that the U.K. is under fire for arresting protesters, including the elderly. The reason? They are expressing support for Palestine Action, a pro-Palestinian group that was officially designated as a terrorist organization last year by the government. The decision came after members of the group vandalized a plane after breaking into the Royal Air Force base over the leadership’s support for Israel, as tensions in Gaza skyrocketed.
U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Sarah Rogers was asked about the state of affairs across the pond by Semafor Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, where she claimed the policy is doing “more harm than good.”
“But on [a] more straightforward issue, like these people Britain is arresting for protesting, for supporting this proscribed organization, your view is they should be allowed to protest?” Smith asked.
“I would have to look at each individual person and each proscribed organization. I think if you support an organization like Hamas, then, depending upon whether you’re coordinating, there are all these standards that get applied. This Palestine Action group, I’ve seen it written about. I don’t know what it did. I think if you just merely stand up and say, ‘I support Palestine Action,’ then unless you are really coordinating with some violent foreign terrorist, I think that censoring that speech does more harm than good,” she responded. “Then I also just want to push back, Ben, on the idea that I’m some partisan agent of Nigel Farage or AFD or anyone else. That’s not true. We don’t intervene in other countries’ politics on behalf of specific candidates. And in American law, there’s this distinction between candidate advocacy and issue advocacy, which might feel arcane to some of your listeners, but it guides me because I’m a lawyer. I really try to speak on the issues, and free speech should be a nonpartisan issue.”
The terrorist designation has resulted in more than 2,700 people being arrested, some of whom are over the age of 60.
Deborah Hinton, a former magistrate who was arrested in July, says the government is going too far.
“In my view, Palestine Action is not a terrorist organisation. I lived through the IRA and the bombing in London when you had to leave shops and leave museums because bombs might go off any minute. Frankly, that is what a terrorist organisation is. This is not a terrorist organisation, it’s a direct action organisation, like the suffragists, like the Greenham Common women, like many other organisations,” she argued. “If people do direct action and they cause criminal damage, then you arrest the people, you charge them [under existing laws], and that’s that.”
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Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to write. Marlee also contributes to BizPac Review.
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