LONDON: Pro-Palestine organizations in the UK have condemned British government plans to give police greater powers over repeated demonstrations, calling it a “draconian assault” on the right to protest, and have vowed to continue mobilizing despite the measures.
UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced earlier this month that police will be granted new powers to impose tougher conditions on demonstrations by taking into account the “cumulative impact” of previous similar events.
Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, or PSC, told The Independent that the move represented “a further draconian assault on the fundamental right to protest.”
He continued: “This potentially has enormous implications. It could mean, for example, ‘you have already protested once, you can’t protest again.’”
Jamal said that police had previously invoked “cumulative impact” to block protest routes near synagogues, and that the Palestine Coalition, a network of six groups behind recent pro-Palestine marches, was prepared to challenge the new rules in court.
