A new report tracking the health of civil liberties around the world points to a striking trend: The crackdown on Palestinian solidarity protests in every form of society, from the most open to the smallest.
“Both the conflict and its impact on the public sphere … is one of the things we take all year long,” said Tara Petrović, author of the report for CIVICUS Monitor, a global coalition of civil society organizations, headquartered in Johannesburg. “We have seen expressions of solidarity and we have seen the suppression of these expressions of solidarity in almost every corner of the world.”
Read more: In Europe, Free Speech is Under Threat from Pro-Palestine Protesters
Many protests are about issues close to home—food prices, national politics. Crowds of people gathered outside South Korea's parliament on Tuesday chanting against the president's martial law, which has banned such speeches. If this law had survived that day, the civil society space in South Korea would have dropped from its assessment, “reduced,” to “restricted” in the next annual CIVICUS report, titled. People Are Strong Under Attack. The group examines public space in 198 countries, from “open” to “repressed,” and in its recently released report found that nearly one-tenth of protests suppressed by the authorities involved Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza, or solidarity with the Palestinian people. .
The deadly attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7, 2023, and the devastating revenge war that followed, sparked protests around the world, many calling for an end to the war that claimed the lives of at least 1,200 Israelis and 44,000 Palestinians. But not all such demonstrations have been accepted. In several countries, including those where civil liberties are considered by CIVICUS to be “reduced,” such as the Netherlands (which was downgraded from “open” this year), Australia, and Italy, pro-Palestinian protesters are met with what the organization sees as overwhelming force, arrest, and imprisonment. Others, like France, ban protests altogether on the grounds that they pose a security risk.
Germany stands out, according to Petrović. In addition to cracking down on protests, German authorities canceled pro-Palestinian events, raided the homes of pro-Palestinian activists, and even enforced a Schengen-wide ban on pro-Palestinian speakers, such as British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu. Sitta, trying to visit the country. (That ban, which applied to 29 European countries and removed passport controls between them, was later repealed.) Recently, the German government introduced new laws requiring those applying for naturalization in the country to affirm Israel's right to exist. Germany's rating in the CIVICUS Monitor was lowered from “open” to “reduced” in 2023—which Petrović said was largely due to the regime's actions against climate activists, with tactics not unlike those currently being used against Palestinian solidarity campaigners.
In the US, whose CIVICUS position stands at “declining” as of 2022, college campuses remain plagued by Palestinian protests, with more than 3,100 3,100 people arrested or detained in protests that often include camps, most of which have been there. peaceful. The disputes cost the leaders of several Ivy League universities their jobs, and led to many universities changing their rules regarding permitted campus activity and introducing new disciplinary measures in an apparent attempt to prevent further such protests from occurring. Last month, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would allow the government to revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofit groups it accuses of supporting terrorist organizations—a power opponents of the bill say could be empowered to target certain organizations, including Palestinian rights. groups.
“Engaging in social media or public debate about Israel and the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli military rule has become a very difficult task,” Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote. Suppressing Conflict: Shrinking Public Space, International Repression and Palestine-Israelto be published on December 5. “This is true even outside of academic settings, whether one lives in Israel, in the Palestinian Authority, in a liberal democracy like the United States, or under a democratic Arab Middle East. That America's classrooms and colleges—often safe spaces for the exchange of ideas—have become a hotly contested place is no accident.”
As long as the war in Gaza continues, protests against it are expected to continue—as well as efforts to suppress them. But Petrović notes that the movement has already had a visible impact on policy: several countries have withheld arms sales to Israel, and the return of funding to UNRWA, suspended when Israel reported that a number of Palestinians involved in the October 7 attack also worked for the UN agency providing health care. , education, and food for the Palestinian people. Visibility, however, is a huge success.
“What we saw this year was this coming together of people all over the world in the same way,” he said, “and especially in solidarity with the Palestinian people and what they are going through.”
Source link
