IHRC says refers attacks by European states on Palestinian supporters to UN

The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) says it has referred some European countries to the United Nations over their recent attacks on Palestinian supporters amid Israeli bombardment in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The London-based organization said in a statement on Wednesday that due to the “deteriorating climate for human rights activists in Europe supporting Palestine”, it had written a letter to the world body regarding recent attacks on Palestinian supporters in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

The non-profit organization added that along with the letter it also submitted a detailed report highlighting official abuses in these countries against Palestinian supporters, who only express solidarity with inhabitants of Gaza, and sought the UN’s “intervention to protect fundamental human rights.”

“It is the first step in a procedure that seeks to engage the international body with the aim of applying pressure on the aforementioned governments to halt their assault on pro-Palestine activism,” the statement stressed.

Since October 7, when Israel’s ceaseless airstrikes on the densely-populated coastal enclave began, Palestinian supporters staged rallies in cities across the UK, France and Germany but have faced attacks on freedom of speech by these European countries.

British Home Secretary Suella Braverman has directed police chiefs to consider whether carrying a Palestinian flag or chanting certain slogans could be classified as support for what she called terrorism under the UK’s draconian anti-terrorism legislation.

Paris reacted with alarming alacrity to shut down protests and ban pro-Palestine organizations with French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin requesting France’s prefects to ban all “pro-Palestinian demonstrations, because they can generate disturbances to public order.”

The French government also began the process of dissolving two pro-Palestine civil society groups, the “Party of the Indigenous of the Republic” and “Palestine will conquer.”

France criminalizes any public expression of support for Palestinian resistance

France’s minister of justice has stated that any form of public support for resistance against the Israeli regime is a criminal offense.

As for Germany, Berlin announced that it would ban the pro-Palestinian group Samidoun. This is while many German cities, including Berlin, Frankfurt, Mannheim and Munich have all banned planned pro-Palestinian protest rallies and where they have staged authorities moved to arrest the demonstrators.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that his government “will ban all activities and organizations supporting Hamas”, a Gaza-based Palestinian resistance group that launched waves of attacks on the Israeli-occupied territories on October 7.

“The pattern of conflating Hamas with all Palestinians and their right of self-defense, self-determination and to resist illegal occupation is a cynical ploy employed by many countries to delegitimize the Palestinian cause and represents a flagrant violation of peoples’ right to express themselves freely without state interference. Governments are using the events in Palestine as a pretext to take a cudgel to the right of freedom of expression,” IHRC’s letter to the UN further read.

Last week, IHRC was one of 10 civil society organizations in the UK to write to the government warning it that any attempt to ban the Palestine flag will be met with an immediate challenge in the courts, it said in its statement.

Nearly 3,500 people have been killed in more than 10 days of Israeli airstrikes and shelling against Gaza, a coastal enclave with a population of 2.3 million people on the Mediterranean Sea.

The Israeli attacks on Gaza began on October 7 after Hamas began its attacks on the Israeli-occupied territories, killing 1,400 settlers and military forces.

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