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A worrying sign of Britain's deepening authoritarianism
Sarah Wilkinson has consistently exposed Israel’s atrocities in Gaza on social media. Now, British counter-terrorism authorities are trying to silence her, writes LINDA PENTZ-GUNTER
A wall of screens displaying surveillance camera footage at the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre, in London, February 27, 2023
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WHEN I spoke at length last April to longtime pro-Palestine activist Sarah Wilkinson, there was desperate passion in her voice. Israel’s horrific assault on Gaza was already in its seventh deadly month and Wilkinson was starting to feel hope ebbing away.
“My fear is that I don’t really know anything else. If we lose Palestine and we lose Gaza, for me that feels like I’m losing part of myself as well,” said Wilkinson, now 61, who at the time was waiting to sail to Gaza on one of the still-stalled Freedom Flotilla aid ships.
Wilkinson is arguably Britain’s most dedicated and prolific online chronicler of the plight of Palestinians, posting graphic and horrifying evidence of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza multiple times a day on her social media platforms.
But last Thursday at dawn, British counter-terrorism authorities decided to silence her.
According to her son, Jack Wilkinson, as many as 16 British counter-terrorism officers — whom he described as “balaclava-clad thugs” — descended on Wilkinson’s home at 7.30 in the morning, seized all her electronic devices and arrested her for “content that she has posted online.”
No formal charges had been announced at press time. On Thursday, the Lebanon-based news site, MENA Uncensored, for which Wilkinson writes, said she was given access to a lawyer, was released on bail and “is in good spirits.”
But Jack Wilkinson, who has now taken over his mother’s X account, reported on Friday that “my mother was hurt, denied meds & bailed to “never” use a phone/laptop.”
Wilkinson quickly became a controversial figure in the movement after she reportedly called the deadly October 7 attack by Hamas on the Be'eri kibbutz near the Gaza border “incredible infiltration.” She insisted a series of subsequent posts doubting the extent of the Nazi Holocaust were not written by her.
This apparently prompted the major pro-Palestine campaigning groups to distance themselves from her, according to a source. None would comment on her arrest.
However, those who know her well describe her as a compassionate humanitarian. In a video posted on Friday to her X account, Hussain Shafiei of the Workers Party of Britain described Wilkinson as “one of the most caring creatures that walks this planet Earth that has given so much of her life, so much of her time and dedicated it to the people of Palestine.”
Wilkinson’s posts are often obscured by a “graphic content” warning which, when unmasked, reveal disturbing photos and videos of Israeli war crimes in Gaza and now the West Bank. One of Wilkinson’s final video posts before her arrest showed Palestinians running past slaughtered sheep to reach a dead child.
“The moment the Israelis bombed and murdered a child in a wheelchair who couldn’t escape: a sheep herd was also hit in the vile attack,” Wilkinson wrote.
Palestine Action, which conducts non-violent acts of sabotage against the Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems UK and other similar companies on UK soil, and of which Wilkinson is a member, was also quick to come to her defence.
“This is what you call a police state — one which is trying desperately to protect the interests of a foreign genocidal entity,” said the group in a statement.
The group’s co-founder, Richard Barnard, was charged on the same day as Wilkinson’s arrest with three counts of “supporting a proscribed organisation.” Seven of their members appeared in court on August 13 charged with violent disorder, burglary and other offences.
The detention of Wilkinson and Barnard also comes on the heels of the August 15 arrest at Heathrow Airport of British Grayzone journalist Richard Medhurst. Currently out on bail, Medhurst has been charged under the 2000 Terrorism Act over his reporting on Gaza. Both he and Wilkinson could face as much as 14 years in jail.
Such draconian punishment has provoked an uproar of anger and disgust online, including from some of the more well-known pro-Palestine and free-speech campaigners.
“Nineteen eighty-four has arrived and is alive and well in the United Kingdom,” said former Pink Floyd bassist and outspoken activist Roger Waters, in a video.
Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.
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