Veterans of the civil rights movement have called on Derry people to return to the streets this Saturday in Waterloo Place at 3 pm to defend the right to protest and to demand an end to the proscription of Palestine Action.
They say it is an issue of freedom of speech.
“Back in the 1960s, the Speical Powers Act limited freedom of speech and thousands came onto the streets of this city to oppose that, and sectarian discrimination across the North. The same issues arise today.
“While a genocide is livestreamed to our phones and we see children starving to death in Gaza, the British government has deemed Palestine Action a “terrorist organization”, expression of support for which could open one to arrest, charged with supporting terrorism.
“This is precisely what happened in the 1960s when to express support for the civil rights movement meant being denounced by the authorities as supporting “terrorism”.
“This was said over and over again in the 1960s. It wasn’t true then and it is not true now: what Palestine Action is doing is peaceful, non-violent direct action.
“We know better than anyone else in these islands what it is to have civil liberties suspended, that is why we will be back this Saturday afternoon – in Waterloo Place at 3.00pm – to continue this campaign.
“We note that Winston ‘Winkie’ Irvine was not charged under the Terrorism Act, despite being found with a car boot load of weapons and with UVF paraphernalia.
“The double standards are are glaring, just as the double standards in relation to what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank are glaring.
Eamonn McCann said: “We call on people to come out again on Saturday to express their opposition to the double standards involved in this and to the proscription of Palestine Action.
“People in Derry who have a sense of their own history and their own struggle against oppression and for civil rights will feel a relationship with this issue because of their own experience.”
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