Al-Quds day London march organisers ‘closely associated with the Iranian regime’, home secretary Shabana Mahmood says
Shabana Mahmood told MPs that organizers of the Quds Day march in London were “closely associated with the Iranian regime”.
The annual protest, organized by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, is billed as an international day in support of Palestine. Home Affairs Minister Shabana Mahmood approved a request from the Metropolitan Police to ban the march planned for Sunday “in order to prevent serious public disorder”.
Ms Mahmood told MPs that plans for the march were “led by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC)”, an organization “closely associated with the Iranian regime”. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp described the group as “essentially a front organization for the Iranian regime”.
The IHRC said the protest would continue as a static demonstration on Sunday and that they were an independent NGO that did not accept funding from any government. They said the Jerusalem day event was organized by a committee involving many organisations, of which the IHRC was “leading”.
Ms Mahmood said she agreed to ban the march, the first banned since 2012, due to increased attention on Iran due to conflict in the Middle East, which would lead to “more participation expected”.
He warned of “increasing tensions between protesters and counter-protesters and thus the potential for greater conflict.”
The ban, which is in effect for a month but is likely to be extended, will come into force on Wednesday and end on April 11. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and the police cannot ban a static protest.
Mr. Philp said slogans at past Jerusalem marches called for an intifada and revolution and included speeches that incited anti-Semitism.
He quoted a former Iranian deputy culture minister warning about a “network of Iranian charities in the UK” that are “funded and controlled by the regime in Tehran”.
A new report by Lord Walney, the former independent adviser on political violence, has warned that UK authorities are failing to tackle the national security threat posed by a network of more than 30 charities, religious institutions or community centers set up to advance the interests of the Iranian regime.
Launching the report on Wednesday, Lord Walney told an event in Westminster that there was continued “abuse of our open society by a hostile foreign state”.
He said the Iranian regime had “a long history of assassinations, terrorism, proxy warfare and transnational repression” and added: “We must face the fact that we have failed to combat the existing soft power infrastructure as well as the hard power infrastructure.”
Addressing the charity commission’s crackdown on these groups, Lord Walney added: “Our response remains worryingly weak. These investigations can literally go on for years and when a police investigation begins they are paused until the charity is fully operational.”
He also noted that the aid commission had focused on regulatory failures and had therefore “left the underlying ideology intact” when “they could have secured procedural improvements”.
Lord Walney described it as “continuity with no real break” and compared Iranian infiltration of Britain to Russian infiltration, saying “we need to make it clearer that Iranian hostility in the region is a threat to Britain”.
He warned that the Jerusalem march could still lead to unrest if allowed to take place as a static protest on Sunday.
The IRHC has been contacted for comment. In response to Lord Walney’s report, the organization denied any alliance or state affiliation with Iran and dismissed allegations of antisemitism as unsubstantiated.
