UK charges pro-Palestine protester carrying 'coconut' placard

Police in the British capital, London, have charged Marieha Hussain with a racially aggravated public order offence after she carried a placard depicting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and then Home Secretary Suella Braverman as coconuts.

Hussain was taking part in an anti-war protest in London on 11 November and calling for a ceasefire in Gaza when she was seen with the banner.

The 37-year-old’s message was clear to locals; a coconut is a reference to someone who is black or brown on the outside but who is seen as a traitor to their heritage and therefore has “white supremist values” on the inside.

In interviews since the matter was raised, Hussain has said that though some statements “may be pejorative, it doesn’t make it racist”. She added that some of the Braverman’s speech when she was home secretary was “so inflammatory and it was racist”, highlighting her claims that “grooming gangs were predominantly Pakistani men”, the government’s “complicity in a genocide taking place in Palestine” and the Rwanda policy – which seeks to forcibly send asylum seekers who arrive in the UK through irregular routes to Rwanda – which she said were “rhetorics which are racist. Coconut is a political critic, it’s about actions not about race.”

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