UK minister condemned for attacking policing of pro-Palestinian protests

Britain’s interior minister Suella Braverman faced criticism on Thursday after accusing police of double standards on what she called “pro-Palestinian mobs” before a politically charged rally on Armistice Day.

Police have said they cannot legally ban Saturday’s march in support of Palestinians under Israeli bombardment following Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has described the planned march as “provocative and disrespectful”, heaping pressure on the Metropolitan Police to ban it.

Tensions between London’s Met Police and Sunak appeared to ease on Wednesday after a meeting at which the force’s chief, Mark Rowley, confirmed the march would not clash with remembrance events for the country’s war dead.

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But Braverman, writing in The Times daily on Thursday, was scathing about the Met’s policing of different groups.

“Right-wing and nationalist protesters who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response yet pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law,” she wrote.

The outspoken Braverman, who has branded the pro-Palestinian rallies “hate marches”, said she did not believe they were “merely a cry for help for Gaza”.

She said she believed they were more about an “assertion of primacy by certain groups — particularly Islamists”, in comments that have been seen as red meat for Tory right-wingers.

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“There is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters.

“I have spoken to serving and former police officers who have noted this double standard,” she added.

Tom Winsor, a former police watchdog chief, said the home secretary’s comments went too far and were contrary to the principle of police independence.

“It’s unusual. It’s unprecedented. It’s contrary to the spirit of the ancient constitutional settlement with the police,” he told BBC radio.

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“By applying pressure to the commissioner of the Met in this way, I think that crosses the line.”

The main opposition Labour party’s home affairs spokeswoman, Yvette Cooper, said Braverman was “out of control”, after the latter previously claimed homelessness was a lifestyle choice and said multiculturalism had failed.

London has seen large demonstrations on four successive weekends since the Hamas attacks in southern Israel on October 7 which Israel says left 1,400 people dead, mostly civilians. They also took 240 hostages.

Since then, Israel has relentlessly bombarded the Palestinian territory and sent in ground troops, with the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza saying more than 10,000 people have been killed.

– By: © Agence France-Presse