Peace activist Maria Gallestegui defies new PASRA law & eviction from Parliament Sq protest

[mark at tlio.org.uk]

On Thursday 3rd May, the High Court lifted the injunction against 
Westminster council preventing them from removing the last tent and 
the large 'peace strike' box from Parliament Square. The police 
arrived in Parliament Square later on that day to enforce the 
controversial new PASRA law and clear the square before the state 
opening of parliament next week.

After Peacestrike's HQ The Peace Box, and tent were seized, veteran 
peace campaigner Maria Gallestegui heroically bedded down for the 
night on the pavement in peaceful defiance of the law. Last night 
(3.am) police officers came and confiscated Maria's sleeping bag and 
roll mat, leaving her with nothing but a bin liner to brave the cold. 
A court summons has been issued for a alledged breach of the PRASRA.

Photos here: http://london.indymedia.org/articles/12184

There is talk that the new PASRA law can be adopted by any local 
authority to criminalise occupations. This needs to be verified. 
 Certainly, the same law is now being utilised by Westminster council 
on other locations in the borough, such as the Royal parks and 
Trafalgar Square.

Report by Rikki from Indymedia below:
Source: https://london.indymedia.org/articles/12178

For years, parliament square has been the site of continuous protests 
against the government's unlawful waging of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, 
and Libya, and linked issues such as the illegal occupation of 
Palestine.

Brian Haw lived in the square for a decade, repeatedly seeing off 
legal attempts to have him removed. He became an icon for peaceful 
protest throughout the world, although he was often maligned by the 
right-wing press here.

The new Con-Dem regime has gone further than any previous government, 
producing the 'police reform and social responsibility act' (PRASRA), 
which for anyone with knowledge of the previous legal history of the 
square, might as well have had a section called the 'brian haw 
legislation', as it is so specifically framed to address the earlier 
failed attempts to prevent 24-hour protest outside Parliament.

Replacing the previous SOCPA legislation, covered on indymedia in much 
detail, the new legislation focusses on the two issues that 
politicians found most galling outside their place of "work". first, 
it bans any sound-amplification equipment, (so badly drafted that it 
may include hearing aids!), and second it bans tents, or any structure 
or any sleeping equipment designed or adapted to facilitate a stay 
overnight or for any length of time.

One of the protestors, Maria Gallestegui, worked with and supported 
Brian Haw for many years, before setting up her own campaign alongside 
(the 'Peace Strike'). when the new law came into force, she asked for 
an injunction against westminster council, pending legal arguments 
over the lawfulness of the new rules and their compatibility with the 
human rights act.

For a while, that temporary injunction stood, while high court judges 
tried to work out whether they could challenge primary legislation 
before it was even used.

After several weeks, they decided they could not, but the injunction 
still stood for one more week pending a hearing into whether an appeal 
would be granted. that final hearing was this morning, and the court 
has decided that the law must stand, on the basis that, in drafting 
the law, a declaration of human rights compatibility was signed, and 
so any further challenges should now occur after the law is enforced, 
rather than before.

Within hours of the hearing, police have just arrived at parliament 
square, and accompanied by officials from westminster council, they 
are dismantling and seizing maria's tent and the remaining box (she 
had two until recently sending one to america with a view to raising 
money for children in iraq by selling it).

The boxes have stood on parliament square for several years, after 
maria had the idea of playing with the SOCPA conditions imposed on 
her. those conditions were that her protest should take up no more 
space than 3m x 3m x 1m, and so she decided to build a huge edifice 
with exactly those dimensions. using them for banner storage and 
security, the two boxes (under two separate SOCPA authorisations), 
attracted decoration and donated art from several underground artists, 
and one has recently sported a mock door to number ten, while the 
other is painted like a 'dr who' style police box (subverted to a 
'peace' box).

Maria has already donated one of the boxes to an american art 
exhibition, with a view to auctioning it and raising money for a 
children's hospice in iraq. she had been attempting to negotiaite a 
similar auction for the remaining box should she lose the legal case, 
but westminster have, under intense pressure from members of 
Parliament, now moved unilaterally to seize the box the moment the 
injunction was lifted.

The PASRA rules have already been enforced on the Brian Haw peace 
campaign, and they have continued their protest with immense 
determination remaining overnight under umbrellas and wrapped up in 
layers, denied the comfort of shelter or a tent.

The new law means that a continuous 24-hour protest outside Parliament 
will be the preserve of only the most incredibly determined (facing 
sleep deprivation, hypothermia, and trench foot!), or the 
independently wealthy.

The arrogance and petty selfishness of this unelected minority 
government appears to know no bounds. the PASRA clauses governing 
protest appear to have no other function than to protect the corrupt 
and genocidal ruling classes from embarassment. their hypocracy is 
breath-taking.

[end]


Background:
by Rikki, 15/01/2012
Ref: https://london.indymedia.org/articles/11456

For more than ten years, Parliament Square has been the site of an 
historic and continuous peace vigil and protest, which began when 
Brian Haw set up banners to highlight the sanctions introduced against 
iraq, which independent analysis (including UN reports) has now shown, 
led to the unnecessary deaths of between half a million and a million 
innocent Iraqi children.

Soon after the beginning of the protest, the US and UK used the 11th 
Sept 2001 attacks in New York as an excuse to invade Afghanistan, 
despite no known connection between the attackers and that country. 
The Parliament Sq protest continued, adding the afghan war as a new 
focus. Then in 2003, the 'coalition' once again waged an aggressive 
war - this time after manufacturing fictitious evidence against Iraq. 
The results of that attack, we know now, more than a million killed, 
huge destruction of infrastructure, the very long-term poisoning and 
ruination of soil and water table through the use of depleted uranium 
munitions, the further destabilisation of the middle east, and a 
country left with a notional democracy which is crumbling into 
factional and repressive chaos by the day. Brian publicly displayed 
huge photos of the disfigured children born, according to more and 
more reliable scientific evidence, as a result of chromosomal changes 
due to depleted uranium. brian was one of the first campaigners to 
regularly highlight this heinous war crime.

The authorities attempted to remove Brian Haw using obstruction laws, 
but, forced to sleep under tarpaulin, perched on the small strip of 
wall that marked the border between royal-owned grass, and 
council-owned pavement, he saw them off in court, enforcing and 
entrenching his right to peaceful protest. His display of banners grew 
larger as people donated to his protest, and it even attracted artwork 
by banksy and others, until it stretched across the length of the 
square opposite the gates to parliament and became known around the 
world. he also used a small megaphone to great effect, embarrassing 
devious politicians with facts and figures as they entered and left 
Westminster. Again, he managed to see of legal attempts to stop his 
megaphone use, although restrictions were made on the hours he could 
broadcast, forcing him to start shouting instead.

So, the morally-bankrupt, corporate-owned, and self-satisfied suits of 
westminster got restless, and demanded new laws to deal with the 
embarrassment that brian caused them. as a result, in 2005, they 
enacted the SOCPA legislation ('serious organised crime and police 
act'), part of which introduced new restrictions on protest in the 
area within one kilometre of parliament. those restrictions, badly 
formulated, attracted a lot of attention and derision. comedy activist 
mark thomas based his act 
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRGZr2m4r7M&feature=related) for a 
while on his mischievous dalliance with the new laws, and he even 
ended up in the guinness book of records for the most demonstrations 
by one person on the same day, part of an attempt to flood the 
authorities with paperwork inspired by the new requirements to gain 
'authorisation' for protesting. other campaigners played with the law 
by regularly holding picnics on the square, surrounded by blank 
placards to signify that they weren't holding unlawful protests about 
anything.

More seriously, the police made an arbitrary restriction on the size 
of brian haw's protest, and then enforced it with a night-time swoop 
by more than 70 officers, who unceremoniously broke up his displays 
and stuffed them into a large container, which drove off as 
politicians arrived at westminster the next morning. it turned out 
later that this act of repression was outside the law as SOCPA gave no 
power of seizure.

The illegal snatch incensed british artist Mark Wallinger so much, 
that he set about producing an exact replica of the whole length of 
brian's display, and won the turner prize for his exhibition of it 
(which he called 'State Britain') on the very edge of the SOCPA zone, 
at Tate Britain.

Brian had always attracted a handful of staunch supporters since 
beginning his protest. one of those early and committed supporters was 
maria gallestegui, but after five years, and a divergence of approach 
over SOCPA, she decided to begin her 'peace strike' protest alongside 
brian's continuing vigil. a strong-willed and brave australian woman 
named Barbara Tucker, incensed by SOCPA restrictions, had recently 
joined Brian's protest. she became a close confidante and ceaseless 
supporter of brian, constantly challenging SOCPA and ending up in jail 
on more than one occasion for her efforts.

Maria Gallestegui carried on her 'peace strike' protest, but rather 
than concentrating on challenging SOCPA, she decided to comply with 
authorisation procedures, which caused annoyance to her 'neighbour' 
Barbara. This annoyance, over the years, turned into something of an 
obsession, with Barbara telling anyone who would listen, that Maria 
runs an apparently ten-year long undercover operation in league with 
the police, MI5, and perhaps even the lizard people. While to all 
those in the know, the accusations are ridiculous, they do wreak havoc 
on would-be support for either campaign. Oh, and the conspiracy 
against Barbara extends to virtually anyone who speaks to or supports 
the peace strike, so this author is also apparently portrayed as yet 
another agent for the state. I am not.

Maria played with the SOCPA restrictions in her own way by accepting 
the same conditions that were imposed on Brian, (namely that the 
protest area must be no larger than 3m x 3m x 1m), taking out two 
separate authorisations, and building two great huge boxes comprising 
those dimensions, which have remained in place with impunity despite 
an outcry from politicians, even surviving the royal opening of 
parliament and the royal wedding.

When the 'Democracy Village' set up in parliament square, (with what 
was in effect a forerunner for the world 'occupy' movement), Barbara 
claimed that Maria had orchestrated it, along with the arrival of more 
and more homeless people, in order to provide the authorities with an 
excuse to clear away all the protestors in the square.

In the event, Westminster Council managed to obtain an injunction 
against the 'Democracy Village' and after evicting them, erected the 
huge fences around the square which have despoiled the 'world heritage 
site' far more effectively over the last two years than any democratic 
protest might have.

Under the guise of restoring democratic rights, but mainly because the 
law had actually failed in its initial purpose of seeing off Brian 
Haw, new Labour leader Gordon Brown promised its repeal within 100 
days of his taking office. Along with most politicians' promises this 
turned out to be a lie, and the law remained, with police still 
utilising it when they chose, its chilling effect on legitimate 
protest useful to an ever more corrupt administration.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 (PASRA):
So it was against this background that PASRA was born, sections 142 to 
149 of which provide particular powers designed wholly to finally rid 
Parliament Square of any effective continuous protest, and to close 
loopholes in SOCPA.

The law gained Royal assent in September last year, but the Parliament 
Square provisions commenced on 19th December, while strangely (perhaps 
to give time to try out the new law and overcome any legal challenges) 
SOCPA (which it was meant to replace) remains in force until the end 
of march this year. On top of this, while the law claims it is 
liberalising the excessive restrictions of SOCPA by minimising the 
area to the grass and pavements of Parliament square, this is a 
sleight of hand, because as mentioned in my earlier article, 
Westminster has just completed a 'public consultation' with a view to 
introducing similar restrictions throughout the borough, and both the 
Dept of Culture and the GLA are also running consultations ending in a 
few days, for similar proscriptions in the Royal parks and at 
Trafalgar Square.

PASRA makes it a criminal offence to attempt to sleep overnight as 
part of a protest, and also outlaws the use of loud-hailers and 
amplifying equipment at ANY time in the proscribed areas. Laughably, 
Westminster claimed in its consultation papers that it doesn't want to 
restrict the right to protest. I wonder what powers they would dream 
up if they did! The laws and proposed byelaws also correct a SOCPA 
failing (in the eyes of repressors), by explicitly introducing powers 
of direction, seizure by force, forfeiture, and even exclusion orders. 
This corrects the situation that all previous seizures under SOCPA, 
when challenged in the courts, have later been shown to be unlawful, 
including the theft of Brian Haw's whole display in 2006.

On the day that the law commenced, the Parliament Square protestors 
received enforcement notices from Westminster, warning them to remove 
tents and other structures or face arrest, seizure and forfeiture.

Maria then asked the high court for an injunction pending a hearing as 
to whether she could get a judicial review of the proposed 
enforcement. The injunction was granted (which held for several months 
pending a hearing into whether an appeal would be granted based on 
legal arguments over the lawfulness of the new rules and their 
compatibility with the human rights act, the last of a series of which 
happened on Thurs 3rd May -ed). I understand that Barbara's campaign 
also applied for a judicial review on the 16th, but they claim, and i 
have no reason to doubt it, that their application has been ignored by 
the high court.

It certainly suits the authorities to conflate the two protests, along 
with any other unattended or homeless people's tents, and even the now 
vacated 'Democracy Village', and this may be what they have done in 
this case. The conflation has two effects: first, it helps the courts 
to avoid specific legal arguments that may be different - Brian Haw's 
campaign has a longer legal history including some landmark rulings, 
and it may indeed suit the court to side-step them where possible, and 
second - it feeds Barbara's paranoia that the 'peace strike' is 
somehow in league with the authorities. I am not suggesting that there 
is no conspiracy against the Brian Haw peace campaign - as the maker 
of "SOCPA - the movie" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol9hcQlVX9M), I 
spent years supporting Brian and Barbara, and saw first hand how 
corrupt the legal system was, with a long catalogue of missing court 
papers, unlawful searches, fabricated police evidence, vicious 
assaults, illegal seizures, unlawful imprisonment, and more - but I 
maintain my belief that Maria has no involvement in any such 
conspiracy.