UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claims “There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule. And we’ve got to collectively, all of us, change that urgently.” First, quick version of this image is likely to change.
Ministers and senior police sign ‘democratic policing protocol’ to control protests outside parliament, town halls and parties’ offices
Activists covered Rishi Sunak’s mansion in oil black fabric in August last year. Photograph: Greenpeace/Getty Images
Downing Street said ministers and senior police agreed to sign up to a new “democratic policing protocol” that would see police treat demonstrations outside MPs homes as “intimidatory”, a minimum standard of police response to demonstrations against MPs and guidance for officers policing protests and other “democratic” events.
During the meeting Sunak told police chiefs they had to demonstrate they would use the powers they already have, saying it was “vital for maintaining public confidence in the police”.
In a stark assessment of the UK’s political processes, he added: “There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule. And we’ve got to collectively, all of us, change that urgently.
“But we also need to demonstrate more broadly to the public that you will use the powers you already have, the laws that you have.”
He said the policing protocol, which commits forces to additional patrols and “provides clarity that protests at elected representatives’ homes should be treated as intimidatory”, would protect democratic rule.
dizzy: Politics is by it’s very nature confrontational and argumentative between opposing parties and perspectives. People are going to disagree and demonstrate that disagreement. There is plenty to object to with Sunak’s party and politics – his continuing destruction of the climate, cheerleading and actual support of – actual complicity in – Israel’s Gaza genocide, relentless attacks on democracy and the right to protest, further destroying the NHS, failing to tax the rich, etc. Sunak shouldn’t be in politics – and he actually won’t be soon – if he’s not willing to tolerate that.
A huge scandal has broken out in the US after the New York Times (NYT), one of the United States’ leading newspapers, was found to have run a major front-page story smearing Palestinian resistance fighters as using ‘systematic’ use of sexual violence co-written by an Israeli film-maker with no journalism background who served as a in Israeli military intelligence – and had ‘liked’ social media posts featuring racism and violence toward Palestinians.
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Schwartz reportedly ‘liked’ a post that talked about turning Gaza ‘into a slaughterhouse’ including the summary execution of prisoners and ‘violat[ing] any norm’:
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres speaks at the opening of the 55th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland on February 26, 2024. (Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
“Today’s warmongers cannot erase the clear lesson of the past,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. “Protecting human rights protects us all.”
The head of the United Nations said Monday that countries and groups involved in wars around the world are “turning a blind eye to international law” and imperiling the lives of millions of innocent people, including many children.
“The rule of law, and the rules of war, are being undermined,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in remarks to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Guterres pointed specifically to conflicts raging in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan and lamented that the U.N. Security Council has frequently been “deadlocked” in the face of mass atrocities, “unable to act on the most significant peace and security issues of our time.”
“The council’s lack of unity on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and on Israel’s military operations in Gaza following the horrific terror attacks by Hamas on 7 October, has severely—perhaps fatally—undermined its authority,” said Guterres, who delivered his address less than a week after the U.S. used its veto power for the third time since October 7 to tank a Gaza cease-fire resolution at the U.N. Security Council.
“Flouting international law only feeds insecurity and results in more bloodshed.”
Guterres’ speech marked the start of the Human Rights Council’s first high-level session of 2024. The U.N. chief said at the session that the world “urgently” needs a “new commitment to all human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political, and social—as they apply to peace and security, backed by serious efforts at implementation and accountability.”
Toward that end, Guterres announced the launch of a “systemwide United Nations Agenda for Protection” under which U.N. bodies “will act as one to prevent human rights violations, and to identify and respond to them when they take place.”
“Flouting international law only feeds insecurity and results in more bloodshed,” Guterres warned. “Human rights conventions and humanitarian law are based on cold, hard reality: They recognize that terrorizing civilians and depriving them of food, water, and healthcare is a recipe for endless anger, alienation, extremism, and conflict.”
“Today’s warmongers cannot erase the clear lesson of the past,” he added. “Protecting human rights protects us all.”
Around the world, violence is increasing.
We must not become numb to appalling & repeated violations of international humanitarian & human rights law.
Violations by one party don't absolve the other from compliance.
Guterres’ address came after Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in separate analyses published Monday that Israel is blatantly disregarding an interim ruling handed down last month by the U.N.’s highest legal body, the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Israeli forces have killed more than 3,400 people in Gaza since the ICJ’s January 26 ruling, and nearly 30,000 total since their assault on the Palestinian enclave began following a deadly Hamas-led attack on October 7.
“Not only has Israel created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, but it is also displaying a callous indifference to the fate of Gaza’s population by creating conditions which the ICJ has said places them at imminent risk of genocide,” Heba Morayef, Amnesty’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement.
“Time and time again,” Morayef added, “Israel has failed to take the bare minimum steps humanitarians have desperately pleaded for that are clearly within its power to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
In his remarks Monday, Guterres warned that an Israeli ground assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah “would not only be terrifying for more than a million Palestinian civilians sheltering there; it would put the final nail in the coffin of our aid programs.”
“International humanitarian law remains under attack. Tens of thousands of civilians, including women and children, have been killed in Gaza,” said Guterres. “I repeat my call for a humanitarian cease-fire and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”
Stephen Flynn has hit back at the Speaker for refusing to allow the party an emergency debate (Image: PA)
THE SNP have accused the Westminster system of “failing the people of Gaza” after the Speaker denied the party an emergency debate on calls for an immediate ceasefire.
Lindsay Hoyle rejected the party’s application for a fresh debate on the issue on Monday afternoon, despite explicitly offering one after his decision to allow a Labour amendment during the SNP’s opposition day debate meant there was no formal vote held on the SNP’s motion.
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The SNP tabled a new motion for an emergency debate so the UK Parliament could vote for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Israel and push the UK Government to take “concrete steps” to help make a ceasefire happen.
Following Hoyle’s decision, a furious Flynn said: “Yet again, Westminster is failing the people of Gaza by blocking a vote on the urgent action the UK Government must take to help make an immediate ceasefire happen.
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Read the SNP’s full emergency debate motion below:
That this House officially reaffirms its position, as of 21st February 2024, to support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Israel; further reaffirms its horror at the October 7th 2023 terrorist attacks by Hamas and the subsequent collective punishment of the Palestinian people in Gaza; demands the release of all hostages taken by Hamas; condemns any military assault on the 1.5 million refugees sheltering in Rafah; further demands the Government immediately halts all transfers of military equipment and technology, including components, to Israel, and to suspend the issuing of new licences; calls on the international community to ensure the rapid and unimpeded humanitarian relief is provided in Gaza; further calls for an end to settlement expansion and violence; urges Israel to comply with the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures; and urges all international partners to work together to establish a diplomatic process to deliver the peace of a two-state solution; recognises that statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people and not in the gift of any neighbour; instructs the Government to vote for an immediate ceasefire, or wording with that effect, during the next relevant motion brought before the United Nations Security Council.
