Starmer govt rebukes UN for wanting persecution of journalists to stop, says it’s bad for… the victims

While embracing Israeli interference in prosecutions, UK govt says UN’s human rights intervention prevents ‘fair trial’ of persecuted anti-genocide activists

The Starmer government has responded to an official expression of condemnation from United Nations human rights experts about his ‘lawfare’ war on anti-genocide journalists, many of them Jewish, with an Orwellian rebuke of the UN for daring to speak out because – this is not satire – their expression of concern might interfere with the right of his victims to a ‘fair trial’.

In other words, told to stop prosecuting journalists, Starmer has told the UN to shut up because it is damaging those he has been told to stop persecuting.

Through the UK ‘mission’ in Geneva, Starmer – through a lackey – lied that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and police are ‘independent’ of government (the CPS reports to the Attorney General and the police to the Home Secretary, both members of Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet) and said that in order to ‘protect’ journalists who have been targeted – by Starmer’s misuse of anti-terror laws to raid, harass and prosecute journalists who have exposed and opposed Israel’s genocide in Gaza – it’s necessary for the government to ignore ‘interference… by international organisations’:

Your letter refers to several individual cases where criminal proceedings are ongoing. As a result, it would be inappropriate for the UK Government to comment on the specific cases you have raised. The UK’s police, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the courts are all independent of the government-Of-the-day. It is vital that these institutions can carry out their duties, and make decisions, free from political influence, including the influence of international organisations The individuals involved have the right to a fair trial and it is imperative that this right is protected, including from interference by the Government and international organisations

The UK government to the UN.

‘You can’t make us stop prosecuting them because your interference means they might not get a fair trial’ is Orwellian ‘doublespeak’ cubed. The UK government is rebuking the UN for properly and legally intervening in persecution – while actively facilitating interference by Israel in decisions whether to raid and/or prosecute UK citizens whose opinion the Israeli regime doesn’t like.

As former UK ambassador Craig Murray has pointed out:

the truth is the exact opposite of the UK government line. Unlike the Israeli Embassy, the United Nations really does have a right to interfere. The Special Procedures mechanisms by which the United Nations approached the UK are a well-established part of international law, and the UK is a party to them. These are instituted by the Human Rights Council, and it has always been the position of the UK that all nations are subject to them.

In addition the UK is since 1971 a full party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is monitored by the Human Rights Committee and to the provisions of which the UN Special Rapporteurs specifically referred in querying the UK’s actions in this matter.

So the Israel Embassy has no right to interfere, and the United Nations has a direct right to interfere; yet the UK has encouraged the illegitimate while repudiating the legitimate. This is a classic example of the way that Zionism has fundamentally poisoned public institutions in the UK, and also of the profound Zionist capture of New Labour…

…The hypocrisy does not even end there. The UK has been the most vociferous of countries in weaponising the UN Special Procedures against its own designated enemies, such as Russia and China. For the UK now to repudiate these UN investigations as “interference” is precisely to adopt the position of those states it has long argued against.

The government letter also goes on to tell the UN experts that under the Terrorism Act that it is misusing against journalists (and other activists), UK police don’t even need any suspicion that the people they are targeting are doing anything wrong, as if this somehow makes it better – and Starmer, who habitually boasts of having been a human rights lawyer, makes no apology for using anti-terror powers against journalists doing their job or human rights activists protesting for Palestinian human rights:

As set out in the accompanying statutory Codes of Practice, although the selection of a person for examination is not conditional upon the examining officer suspecting that particular person of terrorism or hostile activity, the decision to select must be informed by the threat from terrorism or hostile activity to the UK, for example known and suspected sources of terrorism, their patterns of travel through specific ports, observations of a person’s behaviour or referrals from other security, transport or enforcement agencies…

…The powers are rational, justified and proportionate given the potentially serious consequences of terrorism and state threats and the limitations on the exercise of the powers, noting in particular that people travelling through border areas expect to be subjected to this type of checks.

And the letter appears to claim that because ‘any person’ can be subject to anti-terror laws, misusing them to target journalists and their freedom of speech – as the UN experts highlighted – is acceptable and not discriminatory:

Any person, irrespective of profession, can be subject to Schedule 7 and Schedule 3 examinations if the statutory conditions are met. The powers to stop, question, detain and search a person in Schedule 7 may be exercised for permitted purposes connected to whether the person appears to be concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism (defined in section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000). The powers in Schedule 3 may be exercised for permitted purposes connected to whether the person appears to be currently or previously engaged in
hostile activity for, on behalf of or in the interests of a foreign state.

A recently leaked email recently exposed the CPS consulting the Israeli government over decisions whether to prosecute anti-genocide journalists and activists, but it is absolutely clear that this was not a one-off. The cases of Asa Winstanley, Dylan Evans, Richard Medhurst and others targeted by the UK state for exposing and resisting Israel’s genocide make clear that Israeli officials and pro-Israel pressure groups are directly involved in the selection of those that the state will harass, raid and try to criminalise to protect Israel from scrutiny. Not one word of coverage has been given to this scandal by the UK ‘mainstream’ media.

A judge ruled earlier this month that the state’s persecution of Winstanley was unequivocally unlawful. But the government’s letter to the UN makes it abundantly clear that Starmer has no intention of letting the law – UK or international – interfere with his abuse of terror legislation to persecute opponents of Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians and other crimes; it is even holding some of its victims in prison for a year or more to ensure they are punished even if, as frequently happens, they are ultimately acquitted.

The arrogance of Starmer, his lackeys and cronies should be no bar at all to their prosecution in the International Criminal Court, not only for their direct collusion in Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Palestinian civilians but for their contempt for international law and its organisations, and for their abuse of UK law meant to protect UK citizens in order to protect the interests of a foreign power.

In fact, given Starmer’s reliance on the Terrorism Act’s provisions against people suspected of being “engaged in
hostile activity for, on behalf of or in the interests of a foreign state”, if the UK were a functional state and not a police state broken by the corruption of its politicians and their collusion in racist and colonialist Zionism, his own official and private homes would be top of the list to be targeted by dawn raids.

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