a day ago
Two-tier policing row over Palestine protester dressed as Holocaust victim
Scotland Yard has been accused of 'two-tier' justice after police ignored a Palestine protester dressed as a Holocaust concentration camp inmate.
Jewish leaders and MPs criticised the 'religiously aggravated' outfit worn by Maria Gallastegui, in which she replaced the star worn by inmates with an Islamic symbol.
They complained that the police failed to challenge a protest 'clearly designed to cause distress', but warned men 'waving Israeli flags' at a Palestine Action march they could be guilty of breaching the peace.
Ms Gallastegui, 66, a full-time protester who gave up her job as a coach driver nearly 20 years ago for a life of activism, joined a protest against plans to ban the group Palestine Action after its activists attacked RAF aircraft with paint.
Critics contrasted her treatment with that of Hamit Coskun, who was prosecuted and fined for a religiously aggravated public order offence after he set fire to a Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London.
Free speech advocates argue that offensive behaviour should not be criminalised, regardless of whether it is committed by protesters against Islam, such as Mr Coskun, or against Israel.
Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: 'We appear to have a two-tier blasphemy law in this country, which protects Islam from offensive references, but not others.'
Alex Hearn, of Labour Against Antisemitism (LAAS), said: 'Dressing as a concentration camp inmate, with the yellow patch replaced by an Islamic symbol, has caused many people upset.
'This religiously aggravated performance appropriated and distorted the Holocaust and was clearly designed to cause distress. It's shocking that while police act swiftly on less obvious public offences, this blatant display went unchallenged at the heart of our democracy.'
LAAS has written to Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, asking him to investigate the incident as a potentially religiously aggravated offence that had 'appropriated and distorted the Holocaust' and risked 'trivialising the suffering of six million Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution'.
Ms Gallastegui has been arrested previously over the past two decades including during a protest for the right to protest in Parliament Square in August 2005.
She previously lived in a tent in Parliament Square for six years after joining the campaign against proposals to change the law to restrict protests in front of the Commons and Lords.
In 2021, she lived and slept in a 150 year old tree in Hackney to challenge the council's 'reckless' and 'irresponsible' plans to fell it to make way for a 600-home development.
'We are passionate people,' she previously told the BBC at the time. 'Any campaign that we can think of doesn't start overnight. There are a lot of underlying issues that the system is not dealing with.'
A supporter of Julian Assange, the the Wikileaks co-founder, she was banned from going within 100 yards of Belmarsh prison after she damaged a wall in a mock jail break attempt while he was held in the jail.
Ms Gallastegui used a drill against a prison wall, where he was held during his lengthy battle to avoid extradition to the US, next to a sign that said 'jailbreak in progress'.
'Priti Patel Save Julian Assange' was also sprayed on the wall during the stunt.
She previously appeared dressed in the Holocaust outfit in a protest to support Kneecap, the Irish republican rap group, after one of the band's members was charged with a terror offence for displaying a flag in support of Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist group in the UK.
At Monday's protest, Ms Gallastegui was pictured carrying a placard that said: 'We are all Palestine Action,' a message that could lead to criminal action once the group is proscribed.
Anyone who is a member of or supports Palestine Action could face up to 14 years in jail once its proscription is enacted in the next fortnight.
One Jewish observer said: 'One cannot help but conclude that if the police do not stand with us against this hatred, then they stand with those who hate us. There is no middle ground when it comes to abusing the memory of the Holocaust. It is done as a deliberate act of provocation and religious division.'
Ms Gallastegui issued a statement, saying: 'Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp was liberated by the British Army in 1945 following WW2.
'The world was shocked and horrified at the appalling sight of the starving, emaciated prisoners and the piles of decaying bodies in their stripped uniforms.
'Afterwards, the international community affirmed never to let this happen again. 'Never Again'. Fast forward to now, and the same scenario is being carried out again - but this time the concentration camp and the people being deliberately starved are the people of Gaza.
'This is a history lesson for now, and by no means is it meant to be anti-Semitic. Changing the symbols of the yellow star to the crescent and star is simply to illustrate that point.'
