Scottish PEN is deeply concerned about reported police aggression towards peaceful protesters at Thales Arms Factory, Govan, on Wednesday 15 May 2024. The protest peacefully and successfully closed down Thales Arms Factory that day in an effort to draw attention to and disrupt the company’s production of components for Israeli military drones, used in Israel’s genocide in Palestine.
Video evidence of the Thales protest also includes police harassment of journalists and photographers.[i] As Maggie Chapman MSP observes in her letter to Police Scotland, ‘Freedom of the press is vital for a functional democracy. Our journalists must be able to cover important events.’[ii]
Scottish PEN is concerned both for the safety of protesters, upholding their democratic right to peaceful protest, and for the safety of those reporting on the event. As GGEC notes in their statement: ‘police deployment on this day suggests a significant departure from policing approaches at recent peaceful protests outside other arms factories.’[iii]
Any infringement on freedom of expression goes against Scottish PEN’s core principles and we stand firmly against unprovoked police aggression, affirm the right to peaceful protest, and resist any attempts to obstruct the media carrying out their work in a free and unhampered way.
As always, we affirm the principles of the PEN Charter and specifically highlight the following here:
‘PEN stands for the principle of unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and between all nations, and members pledge themselves to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression in the country and community to which they belong, as well as throughout the world wherever this is possible. PEN declares for a free press and opposes arbitrary censorship in time of peace. It believes that the necessary advance of the world towards a more highly organised political and economic order renders a free criticism of governments, administrations and institutions imperative. And since freedom implies voluntary restraint, members pledge themselves to oppose such evils of a free press as mendacious publication, deliberate falsehood and distortion of facts for political and personal ends.’
[i] https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2024/news/daily-journalist-threatened-with-arrest-tells-his-story/
[ii] https://archive.ph/2024.05.16-184619/https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24326029.maggie-chapman-writes-police-journalist-arrest-threat/
[iii] https://ggec.org.uk/ggec-statement-on-police-scotlands-handling-of-protest-outside-thales-arms-factory/