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Amnesty comes out in support of Defend Our Juries as the group’s site gets taken down

Defend Our Juries have confirmed they expect more than 500 people to take part in Saturday’s Lift The Ban pro-Palestine Action protest, which will take place in and around Parliament Square in London at 1pm. Meanwhile, Amnesty has intervened in the situation – after the Met Police threatened all participants with arrest. And on top of all this, Defend Our Juries website has been taken down – showing that any dissent from the Zionist lobby’s agenda in the UK will not be tolerated.

Site take downs and protest warnings

As the group put out on its social media on Wednesday 6 August:

As SKWAWKBOX wrote:

The defendourjuries.org website has been disabled by apparent government legal threat to the site’s hosting provider.

The site provided legal advice to those affected by the government’s ‘lawfare’ war on freedom of speech and protest about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, informed potential jurors about their rights in court to decide their verdict regardless of orders and pressure from the Establishment – and also campaigned for the de-proscription of Palestine Action, the anti-genocide direct action group banned as a terrorist organisation in an unprecedented, and Israel-lobby-driven, move last month that makes support for it a criminal offence punishable by up to fourteen years imprisonment.

As the group behind the site explained this evening in a short thread of X posts, the take-down – through implied legal threat to the hosting company, either from the government or an Israel lobby group – attempts to deprive potentially thousands of people of information on their legal rights…

But by Thursday 7 August the site was back up:

Meanwhile, the Defend Our Juries protest on 9 August was conditional on at least 500 people committing to the action. On Tuesday Defend our Juries announced that the threshold for the protest going ahead had been reached.

Such large numbers of people – sat peacefully holding signs saying “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action” – pose a dilemma for Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley as reports suggest he had been expecting numbers to be in the low hundreds and had intended to arrest everyone.

So, Amnesty International wrote to Sir Mark Rowley warning him that any arrests would fall foul of international human rights law.

Defend our juries and Palestine Action

A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said:

After the independent review of prison capacity this week, we know that the prison system has been days from collapse three times over the last decade or so and remains at 97.5% capacity. Is Mark Rowley really going to spend his political capital and credibility as well as significant public resources on arresting more grandparents and NHS workers under the Terrorism Act in front of the world’s press?

Palestine Action and people holding cardboard signs present no danger to the public at large. While the people that have lobbied for this ban – the arms companies and Israel lobbies – are integral to the genocide we see unfolding every night on our TV screens. Isn’t it time to stop policing this ridiculous, unprecedented and most likely illegal ban and focus on the real criminals instead?

The ban faces a legal challenge in November after the High Court granted a full Judicial Review to Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori [3]. UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk has said the order contravenes international law.

Earlier this week, support for lifting the ban was given from both Jewish and Muslim communities. On Tuesday a delegation of British jews handed in a letter to Downing Street signed by over 300 Jewish people – including film director Mike Leigh, children’s author Michael Rosen and Keir Starmer’s former legal instructor Geoffrey Bindman KC.

The letter to Prime Minister Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper condemns the ban calling it “illegitimate” and “unethical”.

Resisting to protect

Moazzam Begg, Senior Director at CAGE International, said:

Historically, civil disobedience has been employed in this country, as well as by the American Civil Rights Movement and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, to challenge unjust and oppressive laws.

This action is not about Palestine Action, but wider issues of how anti-terror legislation curtails basic freedoms and undermines the rule of law which CAGE International has highlighted over 22 years. There can be no doubt that such laws have been, and continue to be abused and exploited, to suppress free speech and put in place an oppressive infrastructure that represents a danger to our civil liberties.

In such moments, all those who resist are acting in the public interest and are motivated by the desire to protect fundamental principles of fairness, equality and justice.

How can it be a crime to call for an end to apartheid and genocide? The planned action on 9 August is motivated by the highest moral principles that have underpinned our society and made it the envy of the world.

We cannot and should not allow our basic rights to be shredded by an authoritarian government. It is not terrorism for all right-thinking people to demand our government stops all support for a regime that is engaged daily in war crimes and genocide. Let us be under no illusion. The government is criminalising the people of Britain for standing up against the biggest genocide of the 21st century, as it’s livestreamed from Gaza. That is why it must be opposed.

Featured image supplied

By The Canary

This post was originally published on Canary.