An open letter has had to spell out to the UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) a British citizen’s rights to free speech, as well as international laws enshrining oppressed peoples’ rights to resist their oppressors. This is because the CPS currently has preposterous terrorism charges levied against a Palestine advocate and SOAS University of London student. Specifically, in March, the Met Police arrested and charged one of the now so-called ‘SOAS 2’ under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act. The other student was arrested at the same time, and is currently on bail pending further investigation.
The force imposed this repressive overreach of terrorism powers for the crime of?
Speaking out for Palestine.
It’s but another instance of the Israel genocide-enabling British state targeting the people standing against the brutal Zionist war criminal and apartheid regime.
SOAS 2: an open letter calling the CPS to drop the outrageous charges
In early March, the UK criminal justice system ramped up its repressive crackdown on those speaking out against Israel. An atrocious abuse of Section 12 Terrorism Act powers has seen one vocal critic of Israel served charges and a second arrested.
On 4 March, the CPS issued the trumped-up charges against Sarah. This came more than 13 months after her initial arrest.
The Metropolitan Police had originally arrested Sarah in a dawn raid on 31 January 2024. Notably, this was at the behest of Zionist legal lobby group, UK Lawyers for Israel, who’d pushed for the force to make the arrest.
Sarah’s crime? A speech she gave at SOAS University in October 2023. In this, Sarah had articulated support for Palestinian’s rights to armed resistance under illegal occupation and an oppressive apartheid regime. Alarmingly, Zionists had brought the speech in question to the attention of the Met by tagging them in social media posts online.
In other words, Sarah was arrested, and now has been charged, due to a concerted campaign from Zionists to silence supporters of a free Palestine. Specifically, the charges centre round the allegation her speech was “inviting support for a proscribed organisation”, namely Hamas.
Also on 4 March, the Met arrested the second student on suspicion of an offence under the same legislation.
The Act carries a possible sentence of up to 14 years in prison.
So now, an open letter with a significant list of left-wing activist groups, esteemed academics, journalists, musicians, and more, has called out the CPS’s outrageous charges.
An attempt to ‘intimidate and censor’ support for the Palestinian’s freedom struggle
The Revolutionary Communist Group Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! (FRFI) launched the SOAS 2 letter towards the end of March. Since then, it has garnered more than eighty signatories. An accompanying public petition has also brought in a further over 2,000 signatures to date.
Significantly, the open letter is demanding that the CPS drop all charges against Sarah and discontinue its investigations against the other SOAS student. The letter states that the state “suppression of free speech” in these cases is a “calculated targeting” and:
is an attempt to intimidate and censor any expression of support for the Palestinian freedom struggle. It is an attack on the entire solidarity movement.
Crucially, it lambasted the use of counter-terror laws clamping down on expressions of support for Palestinian resistance. Notably, under international law, occupied people have the right to defend themselves against occupying forces. This includes by armed resistance if necessary. So, as the open letter lays out:
Resistance is not terrorism
Kotsai Sigauke from FRFI therefore told the Canary in a comment that:
It is not terrorism for an oppressed people to resist ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism and genocide through armed struggle. It was not terrorism when the people of Algeria fought French imperialism, it was not terrorism when the people of Ireland fought British imperialism, it was not terrorism when black South Africans fought apartheid and it is not terrorism for Palestinians to fight back against the genocidal Zionist state. United Nations General Assembly resolution 37/43 and the Geneva Conventions Protocol 1 explicitly gives Palestinians, and all oppressed people, the right to resist their oppressors by any available means, that includes armed struggle.
Signees have faced similar state repression
Of course, the SOAS 2 joins an unenviable list of Palestine advocates with all too similar experiences of state repression. There’s a palpable and growing trend of state crackdowns on free speech in relation to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Police forces around the country have continued to violently crack down on student Palestine protest encampments. A damning exposé from Liberty Investigates revealed in February that universities have subserviently collaborated with local police forces investigating their students. Acting as servile and complicit instruments of the state:
at least 36 universities had correspondence with the police concerning student protests and more than a dozen held meetings with officers. In many cases universities shared social media posts or images of event flyers with police, and discussed the political views of guest speakers.
Among those who have so far signed the open letter is Electronic Intifada journalist Asa Winstanley. In October, the Met’s counter-terrorism unit raided his home and seized all his electronic devices. While he wasn’t arrested, nor charged, the act of police intimidation of a journalist investigating and writing on Israel’s genocide in Gaza had all the same repressive ingredients as the Met and CPS’s treatment of the SOAS 2.
Winstanley also faced state accusations of encouraging “support for a proscribed organisation”. This is deliberate harassment of a journalist – by any other name – from a key arm of the state’s law enforcement.
Of course, Winstanley wasn’t the first journalist advocating for Palestine that the state attempted to silence using counter-terror laws last year either.
The Met raid on Winstanley’s home followed British border police detaining independent journalist Richard Medhurst at Heathrow airport. It also came after another raid by counter-terror cops on journalist and activist Sarah Wilkinson’s home, who also had personal items confiscated.
Systemic state repression
Another signee is the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol).
The same day FRFI published the open letter over the SOAS 2, Netpol put out a first-of-its kind damning new report. The State of Protest in 2024 laid out in no uncertain terms how aggressive police use of Tory anti-protest laws and portrayals of protesters as threats to democracy, amounted to nothing less than state repression. In one salient part of the report, Netpol detailed that:
Out of 80 arrests for terrorism offences directly related to the war in Gaza, about half relate to protests
The point here is that the state has liberally deployed these counter-terror powers against a significant number of Palestine supporters.
This has included Palestine Action activists like founder Richard Barnard. The Labour Party government’s attorney general, Richard Hermer, personally signed off on the terrorism charges the state is bringing against him. Once again, it’s all over speeches he made at protests. Naturally, Section 12 reared its head amidst the charges. Again, this alleged he’d expressed support for a proscribed organisation: Hamas.
Netpol’s report marked out the terrorism offences as one tool amid the broadscale arsenal of the state’s repressive reactionary tactics to silence advocates for a free Palestine.
Sigauke from FRFI drew similar parallels with the ongoing Met police use of dodgy pre-crime laws, and frequent arrests under Tory anti-protest powers:
Under this Labour government we’re seeing an escalation in repression against the working class and the Palestine solidarity movement in this country. The Metropolitan Police carried out an outrageous raid on Youth Demand’s meeting on 27 March and the Filton 18 are still held in prison on remand for taking action against genocide. There is also the SOAS 2.
Needless to say, Youth Demand is another signatory to the open letter.
He continued:
The SOAS 2, the Filton 18 and Youth Demand all need our unconditional solidarity. Everyone who supports Palestine, wants to defend democratic rights and cares about free speech must support them.
SOAS 2: time to stand together and fight back
The FRFI noted one vital thing that over a year and a half of Israel’s genocide and British state response to protests against should now make abundantly clear. The police is not – and never has been – on marginalised communities’ side. Because time and again, the racist enforcement arm of the establishment has shown its alignment to the oppressors.
So, Sigauke also called out the Labour Party government for increasing police funding. It laid into the government for further machinations to oppress working class, Black, brown, and other oppressed communities in the UK:
Under the Labour government, the state is also introducing measures to further criminalise the working class and anyone who dissents. One of the goals of its ‘safer streets mission’ is to put 13,000 more racist police on our streets. That means more black youths being harassed, more people being brutalised and more black children being strip searched (sexually assaulted). The Labour government is also bringing in the Crime and Policing Bill that has a whole laundry list of measures that will oppress and criminalise the working class, give the police more powers, and further restrict our right to protest.
Ultimately, he said that the state’s increasing repression signals something significant. This is that, people speaking out and standing up for Palestine has them rattled:
The Labour Party and the police want to crush the movement for Palestine, criminalise young people and oppress the working class because they are scared of them. Capitalism and imperialism are decaying, that is why the state is becoming more reactionary. We won’t sit down and accept criminalisation and repression, we’re going to stand up and fight back. That is why we are supporting the protests in April.
In short: the SOAS 2 are a testament to the state running scared. Everyone who stands on the side of and in solidarity with oppressed communities, here and in Palestine, should support them.
You can sign the petition against this latest appalling manifestation of state violence and repression here.
Featured image supplied
