IHRC engaging UN to halt Europe's assault on pro-Palestine activism

The Islamic Human Rights Commission has written to the UN seeking its intervention to protect fundamental human rights as activists in Europe witness a deterioration of their freedoms.

In a statement released today, the IHRC said: “The letter serves notice of our intention to document the attacks on freedoms by the UK, France and Germany and submit a detailed report highlighting official abuses.”

“It is the first step in a procedure that seeks to engage the international body with the aim of applying pressure on the aforementioned governments to halt their assault on pro-Palestine activism,” it explained.

This comes after UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman questioned whether carrying a Palestinian flag is “legitimate” and has called for certain chants to be banned at protests.

In France, the government shut down anti-occupation protests and banned pro-Palestine organisations. France also commenced the process of dissolving two pro-Palestine civil society groups, the Party of the Indigenous of the Republic and Palestine will conquer.

READ: UK’s SOAS suspends students following a solidarity rally for Gaza

Meanwhile, Germany announced that it would ban the pro-Palestinian group Samidoun. Many German cities including Berlin, Frankfurt, Mannheim and Munich have banned planned pro-Palestinian protests and where they have taken place moved to arrest the demonstrators. “The pattern of conflating Hamas with all Palestinians and their right of self-defence, self-determination and to resist illegal occupation is a cynical ploy employed by many countries to delegitimise the Palestinian cause and represents a flagrant violation of peoples’ right to express themselves freely without state interference. Governments are using the events in Palestine as a pretext to take a cudgel to the right of freedom of expression,” states the letter.

Last week, IHRC was one of 10 civil society organisations in the UK to write to the government warning it that any attempt to ban the Palestine flag will be met with an immediate challenge in the courts.

The letter threatens legal action if the government goes ahead with recent threats to prosecute people for carrying the flag which has become an international symbol of the Palestinian people’s resistance against occupation.