It has come to our attention that the current British government, led by the Conservative Party, has been cracking down on Palestinian activists who are speaking against Israel’s naked aggression against the people of Palestine.
The British government has resorted to the use of visa denial, in order to punish activists who are campaigning against the continual occupation of Palestinian lands by the state of Israel.
According to mondoweiss, the list of Palestinian voices that the British Conservative government is attempting to silence is growing. All the activists the British government is targeting are prominent campaigners in favor of Palestinian led Boycott, Divest and Sanctions Movement (BDS) against Israel.
First to be hit with visa denial by the British government is Hamde Abu Rahma, a renowned award-winning photojournalist. Rahma was denied entry to the United Kingdom for 2 years. Despite traveling elsewhere without any incident, the British government has continued to deny him entry for his Roots Run Deep book/speaking tour.
In June 2016, Rahma had a tour organized in the United Kingdom, and at the last minute he was denied a visa to enter the country. Although, people have fought for Rahma, after it became clear that the British government deliberately prevented him from entering the country. An intensive online campaign, both on Facebook and Twitter, was launched, with support from Scottish National Party politician, Tommy Shepard and member of the European Parliament, Martina Anderson. An online petition was also set up. More signatures were collected. Finally, the British government had no choice but to give Rahma his visa, due to the pressure from activists.
As Rahma’s case passed, there came that of Nabil al-Raee, an artistic director of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin. Jenin is a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank. When the Israel officials realized Nabil wanted to travel to the United Kingdom, they raided his house at midnight. With no evidence against Nabil, he was set free.
When Nabil applied for a visa to enter the United Kingdom, with the intent to join another member of the Freedom Theatre to spread the message of Israel’s aggression against a defenseless people, he was refused the visa. A United Kingdom consulate official later told Nabil: “I am not satisfied you are genuinely seeking entry as an entertainer or business visitor and will leave the UK at the end of your trip and do not intend to live for extended periods in the United Kingdom.”
Again, two athletes from Gaza, Nader al-Masri and Sami Nateel who were participating in the Derry marathon in Northern Ireland were also denied visas to enter the United Kingdom. These are common athletes whose only crime is that they have links to the BDS against Israel.
Also denied entry into the United Kingdom are a group of Palestinian medical experts – three doctors and a nurse sponsored by the World Health Organization to give presentations at an international conference in Kingston University, London.
Further, other Palestinian doctors and nurses, a theatre director, a photographer, writers from Gaza have all been refused entry to speak at a festival celebrating contemporary Arab art, athletes, and musicians. Zionist lobbyists in the United Kingdom have infiltrated the British Conservative government, and are infringing upon the freedom of movements of Palestinian activists in order to silence them.
The latest to have become a victim of British visa denial because of opposition to Israel, is the non-violent activist, Iyad Burnat.
Burnat is a non-violent human rights activist. He is well known in the Palestinian solidarity community. In 2015 he received the 2015 James Lawson Award from the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. In fact, Burnat is one of the founders of the Bil’in Popular Committee, a citizen’s group formed by the people of the village, to deal with the regular raids that began in 2004 by the Israeli occupation forces. The group sought to slow the theft of Bil’in’s olive trees and the confiscation of farmland by the state of Israel, and the village’s fight for survival was documented in the Oscar-nominated documentary “5 Broken Cameras,” filmed by Iyad’s brother, Emad Burnat.
Burnat was due in the UK for a book/speaking tour. He was to launch his book Bil’in and The Non-violent Resistance in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland. He was also due to visit the Republic of Ireland. However, he received his visa from the Irish government without any problem.
Burnat was denied a British visa because he allegedly falsely represented himself by not disclosing he was previously denied a visa in 2010, although on his current application he did state that he’d been denied entry before, in 2012. But his failure to disclose the earlier denial was the stated reason of the current rejection.
On Facebook, Burnat revealed that he had previously published an article comparing Zionism to Nazism and ISIS. He also likened the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler. The article was re-published again on Jewish News Online. The owners of the outlet then accused Burnat of anti-Semitism.
This made the Zionist in the British government to target him, and the right time to punish him was during his visa application period.
But activists in the United Kingdom have again stood up. They are fighting for the freedom of Burnat. Both international and United Kingdom online petitions have been set up to collect signatures. You can click here for the United Kingdom petition, and here for the international petition to add your signature.
You want to support Anonymous Independent & Investigative News? Please, follow us on Twitter: Follow @AnonymousNewsHQ
This article (UK Government Crackdown on Palestinian Activists, Uses Visa Denial as a Weapon ) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.
