Clive Sulish
(Reading time: 3 mins.)
Participants in a small picket outside a Dublin court on 13 April were threatened with arrest by Gardaí unless they dispersed.
The picketers were supporting two activists facing charges after being pepper-sprayed by Gardaí on the Dublin docks in October last year.
The event in October had been to symbolically blockade Ireland against imports from the Zionist state due to its genocide of Palestinians. Ireland is the second-largest importer of Israeli goods next to the EU and the largest single-state importer of all, exceeding even the USA.
Pickets outside the Court of Criminal Justice in Dublin have been a regular feature in recent years, not only in support of Palestine solidarity activists but also anti-NATO protesters, housing activists and Irish Republicans (the latter being brought through the no-Jury Special Criminal Court).
While some attend the actual court case others picket outside with flags, placards and banners. Until the incident being described there has been no recorded trouble from the Gardaí. However on the 13th picketers were approached by at least 15 Gardaí from five Garda vans.
First they went to a lone picketer who was standing with Palestinian flags on the line dividing west from eastbound traffic outside the court. It is not known what words were exchanged between them but they accompanied him to the roadside for some time before detaining him in handcuffs.
The Garda leader then told the picketers immediately outside the court to leave the area and when they asked what law they were accused of breaking refused to reply except to directed them under the Public Order Act to leave or he would arrest them.
Most of the picketers crossed the road to the north-east side but after the Gardaí departed, slowly drifted back. Gardaí returned, their previous leader visibly angered as he once again told them to leave, adding that should he find them in the area, he would arrest without warning.
Once again most picketers crossed the road away from the Court but shortly thereafter the court adjourned, both activists of the Dublin Port incident emerging along with their supporters who had attended inside and shortly thereafter all dispersed in various directions without incident.
The legal advice is that neither the individual picketer in the road nor the others nearer the court were breaking any law and that the Gardaí, under instructions from somewhere, exceeded their powers, including under the Public Order Act.
The picketers viewed the Garda actions as an attack in general on civil liberties, the right to peacefully assemble and demonstrate and in particular on the right to express solidarity with the Palestinian people and to protest Irish State collusion in Israeli State genocide.
A couple of separate incidents occurred prior to the Garda action. In one, a seemingly hysterical man appeared before the solidarity picketers, with two others videoing him while he brandished a tabloid newspaper with a headline alleging a sexual offence by a migrant.
He departed quickly shouting racist sentences. Later another in similar vein approached to within a foot of the picketers asking them where they were from, alleging that sexual assaults were committed only by immigrants and twice made an unsuccessful grab for a Palestinian flag.
The two Palestine activists are due back in court on 11th June and the arrested picketer, it is believed, on the 12th. It has been suggested that legal observers trained by the Irish Council for Civil Rights will be in attendance outside, as they were during the Garda attack last October.
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