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A former British Army commando and defence attaché has accused the Government of acting like a “dictatorship” after he and over 500 others were arrested protesting against the ban on Palestine Action.
Retired colonel Chris Romberg, 75, was at the Defend Our Juries protest outside Parliament on Saturday, alongside hundreds of others.
Romberg served in the Army for 33 years, including in 29 Commando Regiment, and was defence attaché for Britain in Egypt and Jordan until 2007. He is the son of a Holocaust survivor, with his father, grandparents and aunts having to flee from Austria in 1938 after the German takeover as they were of Jewish descent.
After holding up a sign saying: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action” – which now carries a potential prison sentence of 14 years – Romberg was arrested and escorted by officers to be processed in a make-shift facility near Whitehall, where hundreds were arrested and handed bail conditions not to attend similar demonstrations.
He told Byline Times: “Of those who were arrested as terrorists on Saturday – about half of them were pensioners…You had disabled people in wheelchairs. Right next to me, an 89-year-old woman was arrested and carried off.
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“Are these really the terrorists that the Government is supposed to be fighting? This may continue, more people will join. People are seeing this not as a determined movement by the Government to stop terrorists, but as criminalising pensioners.”
The Prime Minister’s spokesman told journalists on Monday: “Palestine Action was proscribed based on strong security advice following serious attacks the group has committed involving violence and injuries and extensive criminal damage.
“This follows an assessment from the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre that concludes Palestine Action has committed three separate acts of terrorism…You’ll understand we can’t go into all the detail at this stage. However, further evidence and security assessments have been provided in closed court, and the assessment supported the proscription.”
Chris Romberg responded to the claims of secret evidence against Palestine Action, saying: “I feel it’s all too easy to start claiming national security, claiming you have secret information, slightly frivolously.
“Years ago, Monty Python did a sketch about gangsters called the Piranha Brothers, and one of the characters in this had his head nailed to a coffee table by the Piranha Brothers. When asked why, he said, “Oh, they said I’d broken the unwritten law.” They said, “What was it?” “I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me.”
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“We feel the Government is getting into this sort of situation. In the court case, they also produced supposed evidence, for which everybody had to leave the court and neither the claimants nor their lawyers were allowed to know what it was, or even be present, and this was then put before the judge without any [cross-examination].
“This sounds like what we would normally expect from an absolute dictatorship.”
On Tuesday (12th August) organisers Defend Our Juries said a Telegram channel that was set up prior to their ‘Lift The Ban’ campaign launch was taken down without prior warning. The channel was used for ‘sharing information on peaceful protests and legal advice’.
A spokesperson for the group said the ‘latest interference’ with the organising tools for the Lift The Ban protests followed the Defend Our Juries website being taken down last Wednesday, and an open call being cancelled by Zoom just one minute before it was due to start last Thursday, apparently at the request of the Met Police.
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Romberg believes that “great efforts are being made to suppress any movements that are supporting the Palestinian people against their genocide” across western Governments.
“If any movement raises the profile of this, they’re doing their best to suppress them by statements, by propaganda, by smearing, by legal measures, bannings, the use of strong police power. This is part of this pattern.”
He believes the Government will “try and hold out” against the pressure to repeal the ban. “But they are, in many ways, making themselves look ridiculous.”
Of the police response on Saturday – a huge operation for the Met Police, Romberg adds: “Some of them clearly didn’t really feel that this was what they should be doing…They had to get reinforcements from various different parts of the country. They conducted it peacefully. Sometimes they seemed slightly embarrassed…[But] they were clearly under orders and had been told to do this.”
He questions the amount of resources being put into clamping down on Palestine Action. “Putting 500 people into jail for some years – is that really the best use of the state? We will see what happens.”
The former colonel hopes that the pending judicial review succeeds, “not just from my own personal point of view, but in order that the prohibition is overturned.”
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“What we were arrested for involved holding up a piece of cardboard, and on this piece of cardboard we’d written some words, and common sense tells people that that is not an act of terrorism.
“People have an idea of what terrorism means. Terrorism means violence against people, bombs and shootings, driving vehicles into crowds. Terrorism is not holding up pieces of cardboard.”
Asked if former army compatriots may also speak out, he said that in the forces, “ we expect people to realise that they have a higher duty to international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the Genocide Convention.”
“Every year, soldiers are given a training session to remind them of this. For that reason, I feel people do have an obligation to speak out, and it’s disappointing that more people don’t.”
Romberg is a member of the group Holocaust Survivors and Descendants against the Gaza Genocide, whose members are themselves child survivors of the Holocaust or whose parents or grandparents survived the camps and ghettos or had to flee. Many have other family members who were murdered.
He added: “We all feel the horror of the genocide of the Palestinians because of our family histories. For anyone now looking at it, they can see this is one of the worst crimes of modern times that’s going on there.”
The Met Police said that the overwhelming majority of arrests – 522 out of 532 made at the demonstration – were for displaying a sign in support of a proscribed organisation (Palestine Action) contrary to Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
A spokesperson for the force said: “Over the coming days and weeks, officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command will work to put together the case files required to secure charges against those arrested as part of this operation.”
Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com
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