Demonstrations over the same issue were held in London and Kuala Lumpur last weekend. In one, the authorities kept order in good cheer. In the other, heavy-handed policing led to hundreds of arrests, amid much commentary about a fearful chilling of free speech.
In the past, some might have expected the second to have been the demo in Kuala Lumpur, or in Jakarta or Bangkok, where there have also been pro-Palestinian rallies. But it was in London that 522 people were arrested for protesting against the British government’s decision to ban a group called Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000.
What has Palestine Action done? Activists broke into a Royal Air Force base in June and sprayed two planes with red paint, but the group’s co-founder Huda Ammori has quoted the UK’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre’s assessment that “Palestine Action does not advocate for violence against persons”. British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, however, insists that it “is not a non-violent organisation”, and has defended the proscription, which makes membership of, or support for, Palestine Action a criminal offence, with a sentence of up to 14 years in prison.
This puts the group and its supporters in the same legal bracket as Al Qaeda or ISIS – which has been condemned by the former Labour cabinet minister Peter Hain as “intellectually bankrupt, politically unprincipled and morally wrong”. Both the suffragettes who fought for the right of women to vote in Britain, and the anti-apartheid protests that Mr Hain led as a young man, would have been labelled as terrorist under this order, he told the House of Lords earlier this month. “Frankly I am deeply ashamed,” he said.
Mr Hain is not alone in this view. Many believe that this is yet another case of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government bending over backwards to please supporters of the Israeli administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by restricting entirely legitimate criticism of what a host of distinguished scholars and organisations have called Israel’s “genocidal” campaign in Gaza. He may not have had this issue in mind, but US Vice President JD Vance was at least partly right when he warned against Europe going down a “very dark path” on free speech during his recent stay with UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
“The entire collective West got a little too comfortable with censoring rather than engaging with a diverse range of opinions,” he said. What is the proscription of Palestine Action, if not exactly that? The very obviously respectable people who have been arrested for supporting the group makes the decision appear even more draconian. No wonder Mr Hain declared that the ban would “end in tears for the government”, and if a legal challenge succeeded, it “would be a mercy to all concerned, including the government”.
European-style free speech has not been the norm in most South-East Asian countries. Nevertheless, when regional readers put forth legislation that further limits freedom of expression, they can and do defend it stoutly. In 2016, then-Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak introduced two laws on terrorism and security that critics said curtailed civil liberties. His response? “I make no apology for placing the safety and security of all Malaysians as my foremost priority,” he said. “The best way to protect civil liberties is to ensure national security.”
Likewise, Singapore’s PAP government had no qualms earlier this year about passing The Maintenance of Racial Harmony Act, which allows the Home Minister to issue restraining orders against individuals or entities “for conduct that causes feelings of enmity, hatred, ill will or hostility between different races in Singapore”. Anyone breaking an order faces up to two years in prison.
Britain’s Labour government, on the other hand, is currently defending what is seen by most people as indefensible.
Look at who has been arrested over the proscription of Palestine Action – they include a retired magistrate, a war hero colonel, and Jonathon Porritt, a baronet and former environmental adviser to King Charles III. These are hardly dangerous revolutionaries. Pointing out that about half of those arrested over the weekend were aged 60 and above, including almost 100 in their seventies and 15 in their eighties, the editor of Prospect magazine, Alan Rusbridger, published an article headlined: “Dubbing tame pensioners as ‘terrorists’ makes a farce out of the Terrorism Act – and freedom of speech.”
“It’s a funny old world when Margaret Thatcher had a greater sense of individual liberty than Keir Starmer,” wrote Rusbridger, who is also a former editor of The Guardian.
But Britain is far from alone. In the US and Germany, the authorities have attempted to deport pro-Palestinian activists. Social media posts are being scanned, and the possibility of being detained or put on the first plane home is no joke. A Qatari friend was recently due to attend an old associate’s wedding in America, but told me he thought he’d better not risk it. His comments on X don’t support terrorism, but he does repost reports critical of Israel. He was probably right not to go.
So on an issue that is one of the most crucial of the day, the UK, Europe and the US have been denying the right to free speech, whereas in South-East Asian countries – so often criticised on human rights issues – citizens can have their say. And people can see why.
This is very dangerous in terms of isolating Israel even further; it risks fuelling anti-Semitism, and the allegations that the so-called Israeli lobby influences western governments and western media – with honourable exceptions – is now widespread. There was a time when to state that view was to expect an accusation of anti-Semitism to follow pretty soon, and in the past, I have pushed back against anything that smacked of age-old conspiracy theories.
But when an eminent Malaysian businessman and one of the country’s top diplomats talked to me about the Israeli lobby’s dominance over the West in the past week, I couldn’t demure. They would have been incredulous if I had tried to argue to the contrary. Just take the issue of Palestine Action.
To echo Rusbridger, it’s a funny old world when there is greater free speech in South-East Asia than in Europe and the US, where politicians never stop crowing about their love of liberty. But liberty for whom? Not for Palestinians or their supporters, it would appear.
A reckoning will come – indeed, it is already coming – and contrary to their efforts, it may hurt the state and the people that these politicians have been covering up for the most.
