(AFP) — Hundreds of people turned out in London Sunday for a pro-Palestinian march banned by the government after police said it was organised by a group “supportive of the Iranian regime”.
Interior Minister Shabana Mahmood said earlier this week she had agreed to the ban to “prevent serious public disorder” in the context of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, where Iran has launched strikes in retaliation against a US-Israeli offensive.
It is the first time a protest march in the capital has been banned since 2012 but a static demonstration was permitted, according to the Metropolitan police.
Police kept people in the annual Al-Quds Day event and counter-protesters apart by allowing them to gather on opposite sides of the River Thames not far from parliament.
Pro-Palestinian protesters who were directed to the south side of the river waved flags and held up placards with slogans such as “Stop Israeli war crimes,” in a reference to Israel’s offensive in Gaza in response to the October 7, 2023 attacks.
“I just feel so strongly that what has happened to the Palestinians is so unjust,” pensioner Jean Apps, 81, from Purley in south London, told AFP.
“And now I am here also because of the illegal attacks on Iran. I know Iran is not perfect but the Iranian people should be left to sort out their own problems,” she added.
On the other side of the river counter-demonstrators waved US and Israeli flags along with the the Lion and Sun Iranian flag favoured by exiles.
They also held up placards with the words “Make Iran great again” and “Standing with my Jewish friends”.
They chanted: “Long live the king,” referring to Reza Pahlavi, exiled son of Iran’s last shah who was ousted by the 1979 revolution.
“We are supporting the king of Iran, we are asking America and Israel to help us eliminate the IRGC,” Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said Shiva, 37, an Iranian chef living in London.
“They don’t care about the people, they are just killing us. It’s a cruel regime,” she added.
The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), an NGO which organises the annual Al-Quds Day march, strongly condemned the decision to ban the event, calling the move “politically charged”.
It said the London police “unashamedly regurgitate Zionist talking points” about the IHRC without evidence.
The march was an “international demonstration… in support of Palestinians and all the oppressed around the world”, the group added after the ban was announced.
Rally participant Ali, 19, said he was there to “stand with the oppressed”.
“The last few years have really been a wake-up call in terms of the oppression we have seen across the world, not just in Gaza,” said the London-based project coordinator.
Mahmood said on Tuesday she was “satisfied” a ban was “necessary” due to the march’s scale and context.
The minister added that she expected to see “the full force of the law applied to anyone spreading hatred and division”.
Al-Quds day, which takes its name from the Arabic for Jerusalem, originated in Iran in 1979 in support of the Palestinian people and is now marked annually in various countries. It aims to protest Israel’s occupation of east Jerusalem.
London police’s Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan has claimed the march organisers are “supportive of the Iranian regime”.
In a post on X, the force said three arrests had been made during the rally, “one for showing support for a proscribed organisation, one for dangerous driving and a third for threatening and abusive behaviour”.
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