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CND stands in solidarity with those currently under attack for taking non-violent direct action, including Palestine Action. NVDA has a long history as part of struggles for liberation from the Suffragettes and Civil Rights to Greenham Common and the movement against apartheid in South Africa. The increasing attacks on our right to protest and non-violent direct action is a fundamental threat to our democratic freedoms and must be resisted.
Below is a joint statement from the Palestine Coalition:
We condemn the recent draconian attacks on members of Palestine Action for taking non-violent direct action. These form part of a wider crackdown on protest and support for the Palestinian struggle for liberation. The people who should be in the dock are those who are complicit in Israel’s war crimes.
For over a year Israel has been conducting a genocidal assault against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them children, and laying waste to hospitals, homes, schools, mosques, churches, and the entire basis for human life. Outrage at Israel’s ongoing violence and anger at the continued complicity of Western governments, corporations, and institutions, has given rise to an inspiring wave of protest actions around the world. All those who have taken meaningful action to oppose Israel’s genocide, are standing on the right side of history.
In the face of overwhelming public support for an end to Israel’s genocidal violence and calls for human rights and international law to be upheld, governments across the Western world have turned to repression. From Germany to the USA, peaceful protests have been criminalised and subjected to police violence. In Britain, the solidarity movement has been demonised and we have experienced the unprecedented use of police orders and repressive powers to curtail our right to march and protest. Individuals – including journalists and academics – have been targeted for their support for Palestinian rights. We are now seeing the outrageous use of anti-terror legislation to target those, such as Palestine Action, who deploy the tactics of non-violent direct action. This, in turn, is part of a wider repressive trend in which these laws have also been utilised to intimidate those speaking out and impose extreme punishment on Just Stop Oil and other activists. Non-violent direct action has a long history as part of struggles for liberation from the Suffragettes and Civil Rights to Greenham Common and the movement against apartheid in South Africa.
Repression can be defeated. Earlier this year, the attempt by the former government to pass an anti-boycott bill to ban public bodies from divesting funds from companies complicit in Israel’s illegal actions was defeated by a broad coalition that brought together trade unions, solidarity and campaigning organisations, environmental, faith, human rights and cultural groups and others. Since then, the wider movement has secured important boycott and divestment victories against corporations and institutions that are complicit in Israel’s genocide.
The rising authoritarian tide is a fundamental threat to our democratic freedoms. It must be resisted by all those who oppose Israel’s genocide and support the right to protest. We won’t be silenced. We will continue to build the mass solidarity movement that is needed, and we will not give up until Palestine is free.
Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Friends of Al Aqsa, Stop the War Coalition, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
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