Tag: protest
Massive Berlin protest exposes widening split between the people and government on Palestine and Gaza genocide
Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Source: Laurențiu Dragota/DKP Berlin Mass Berlin demo illustrates growing divide between public and government position on genocide in Gaza.
Germany’s biggest demonstration to date in solidarity with Palestine brought more than 100,000 people into the streets of Berlin on Saturday, September 27. Initiated by a wide coalition of organizations – including Palestinian groups, peace and health associations, climate activists, and artists – the protest demanded an end to German-Israeli military cooperation and repression of solidarity movements, as well as support for Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
“We are taking to the streets to demand an immediate end to the genocide in Gaza and to stand up for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, freedom, and dignity,” Basem Said of the Palestinian community in Berlin said of the protest’s demands.
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“While everyone can see the mass atrocities being committed by the Israeli army in Gaza, the German government denies the systematic violence,” the organizers wrote in their call. Framed this way, the march explicitly challenged the principle of Staatsräson, Germany’s self-declared “reason of state” tying much of its political identity to support for Israel.
The demonstration comes as the divide between public and governmental positions on this issue widens. Recent polling shows that a majority of Germans – 62% – believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. That figure rises to nearly 80% among supporters of the left party Die Linke and over 70% among those of the Greens and the Social Democrats. Yet the government continues to deepen ties with Israel even as other European administrations have made minor concessions under pressure from mass mobilizations, such as symbolic recognition of Palestinian statehood at the UN General Assembly’s high-level week.
Source: Laurențiu Dragota/DKP Berlin Similar behavior continued in the days leading up to the protest. On September 25, for example, German Minister for Economic Affairs Katherina Reiche met with her Israeli counterpart, emphasizing the “unique, deep and multi-layered nature” of the cooperation between the two countries. “Israel’s economy is not only resilient but globally recognized for its cutting-edge technology, entrepreneurial spirit and vibrant start-up economy,” Reiche was quoted saying. By that date, Israel had killed at least 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza, with hundreds of thousands more suffering starvation and violent displacement.
“The German government continues to hold on to its cause and support the Israeli government,” said Dr. Khaled Hamad, one of the signatories of the initiative Together for Gaza (Zusammen für Gaza). “German involvement in the genocide against the Palestinians must be stopped, and double standards ended.”
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The organizers and supporters of Saturday’s events were diverse. Coordinators of the central event included the Palestinian community in Germany, eye4palestine, Amnesty International Germany, and medico international, joined by Fridays for Future groups, the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network, and Germans Against Genocide. They were echoed by journalists, writers, and left-wing political activists who launched the call for the demonstration. In total, dozens of organizations and initiatives participated in the preparation under the umbrellas of All Eyes on Gaza and Together for Gaza.
Demonstrations are expected to continue across Europe throughout October. In Germany, a peace protest is scheduled for the coming weekend, coinciding with German Unity Day. In Spain, Italy, Romania, Croatia, and other countries, actions in the following days will denounce government complicity after two years of genocide in Gaza and renew demands to end all ties with the occupation regime.
Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. Counter-terrorism police arrest key members of Defend Our Juries ahead of mass protest
Metropolitan Police officers observing a protest in central London in support of Palestine Action, organised by the Defend Our Juries group, July 5, 2025COUNTER-TERRORISM police arrested key members of Defend Our Juries today in “an unprecedented assault on free speech” just hours before the group was due to hold a press conference on an upcoming mass protest against proscribing Palestine Action.
Despite the arrests, the group confirmed that the protest will go ahead on Saturday, having met its target of securing 1,000 pledges to attend.
The protesters will gather in Parliament Square holding signs reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action,” challenging the police’s ability to crack down on supporters of the proscribed group.
Defend Our Juries founder Tim Crosland and law student Paddy Friend, who were due to speak at the press conference, were among those arrested during dawn raids today.
They were arrested along with three others under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which prohibits support for proscribed organisations.
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A Defend Our Juries spokesperson said: “Locking up our key spokespeople just hours before they were due to hold a press conference announcing more peaceful Lift the Ban protests constitutes an unprecedented assault on free speech in our country.
“This level of political repression is not what we expect in a democracy — it’s the kind of tactic typically associated with authoritarian regimes around the world.
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Chief Superintendent Helen Flanagan said: “There are serious consequences for those who are found guilty of an offence under the Terrorism Act, so I would urge anyone considering showing public support towards this proscribed group to reconsider.”
Kerry Moscogiuri, from Amnesty International UK, said: “Criminalising speech or protest is only permitted when it incites violence, hatred or discrimination.
“To be clear: expressing support for Palestine Action does not meet this threshold. In fact, arresting and prosecuting people in this context, is a violation of the UK’s obligations under human rights law.”
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Palestine Action joke that appeared in the UK satirical magazine ‘Private Eye’. 
Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide. Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA Journalists decry escalating state attacks on press freedom in India
Original article by Abdul Rahman republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Journalists and activists protest in Delhi against the state’s attacks on press freedom. Photo: DUJ The ultra-right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governments in various provinces in India have used sedition charges against journalists for their critical reporting on policies and actions.
Members of the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) and the Kerala Union of Working Journalists (KUWJ) held a protest in India’s capital, New Delhi, on Wednesday, August 27, denouncing the rising cases of state-sponsored attacks on journalists in the country.
The protesters also demanded the immediate withdrawal of all the false charges against senior journalists Siddharth Varadarajan, Karan Thapar, and Abhisar Sharma, calling them blatant attacks on media and press freedom in the country.
The DUJ and KUWJ warned that if their cases are not withdrawn and such attacks on press freedom continue in the future, journalists in the country will take larger public action and flood the streets in protest.
Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor-in-chief of the independent newsportal The Wire, Karan Thapar, senior editor with The Wire, and another senior journalist, Abhisar Sharma, were booked by the police in India’s north-eastern state of Assam and charged with sedition and other criminal activities.
The case against Abhisar is related to his reporting on his YouTube channel on the charges of corruption against the chief minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma. Abhisar also talks about the chief minister’s openly sectarian policies and provocative language against Muslim minorities in his video.
Varadarajan and Thapar were booked first in July and then again in August by the Assam police for their critical reporting on Operation Sindoor, India’s military operation against Pakistan in May which created a war-like situation between the two nuclear-powered neighbors.
Varadarajan and Thapar went to the court demanding the dismissal of the cases against them. While the matter was still under consideration by the court, the Assam police filed fresh charges against them. The Supreme Court of India (SCI) provided the journalists temporary protection from any action.
Abhisar Sharma also received interim relief from the SCI on Thursday. However, in both cases the SCI failed to quash the First Information Reports (FIRs), the official document in India that initiates criminal proceedings.
BJP’s attempts to silence critical voices
What the DUJ calls “attempts to browbeat and harass the media into submission”, has been a policy of the BJP government to silence critical voices in the country.
Assam is ruled by the same BJP which runs the union government in Delhi.
Several other journalists have faced false charges in the state in the last few years. In March of this year, Assam witnessed large-scale protests against the arrest of senior journalist Dilwar Hussain Mazumdar, who was arrested after he tried to expose corruption in a cooperative bank.
The union government has also used its agencies to raid and shut down independent newsportals, such as Newsclick, and has threatened others, including the Wire, to try to silence them.
Reflecting on the state of media in India earlier this year, Reporters without Borders (RSF) demanded that the state must “end media raids and arrests of journalists, often carried out under the guise of anti-terrorism laws or tax regulations.”
RSF had noted that “this judicial harassment has reached a critical level for independent news media”, with authorities repeatedly misusing the legal provisions.
Misuse of sedition
Apart from anti-terrorism laws and allegations of financial irregularities, the BJP government has also used sedition, a colonial era offense which remained a part of India’s legal codes even decades after independence. It has been frequently invoked against journalists questioning government policies.
Following massive public outcry and court interventions, the BJP government promised to scrap it in 2023, underlining its “colonial origin”. However, within months, the same government brought it back with a new name under the new set of legal codes called Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), promulgated in 2024.
The Wire has filed a fresh petition in the court to remove the sedition charges from the new code (section 156 of the BNS).
The DUJ hopes that the section “will be struck down so it can no longer be used to arrest, imprison, browbeat and harass those who dare to speak truth to power.”
Metropolitan Police officers observing a protest in central London in support of Palestine Action, organised by the Defend Our Juries group, July 5, 2025
