SOCPA REPEAL FLOATED

For Immediate Release
PEOPLE PROTEST BEATS PARLIAMENT BAN
Sunday 24 June 2007

Anti-war group Justice Not Vengeance welcomes today's announcement that Gordon Brown has promised to repeal parts of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act by allowing peaceful protest to take place outside Parliament.

JNV co-ordinators Milan Rai and Maya Anne Evans, as featured in the recent 'Taking Liberties' documentary, have been at the forefront of resisting the legislation after becoming the first people to be prosecuted under the act for reading the names of the Iraq war dead in front of Downing Street.

Their appeals were filed earlier this week to be heard at the European Court of Human Rights with the argument that the act is incompatible with the Convention's articles of freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful association with others.

The group will maintain pressure on the government to repeal other pieces of oppressive legislation passed in aid of the 'war against terror'; including sections of the Terrorism Act (2000), detention without trial, extraordinary rendition and torture.

JNV will continue to support peace activist Brian Haw who has been camped outside parliament for the last 6 years and has become the symbol of free speech in this country; recently winning the title of most inspiring political figure.

Author of 'Naming the Dead' Maya Anne Evans says: "This is testimony that protest matters and can make a difference. We should do all in our powers to stop a possible war with Iran and lobby for the withdrawal of UK troops from Iraq and Afghanistan."

The 10 years of Blair's supremacy has seen individuals criminalised for wearing anti-Blair/ Bush T-shirts, immigrants being locked up for years without charge, the extradition of innocent UK citizens to the USA without evidence or charge, and the use of torture to secure confessions.

Gabriel Carlyle an organiser of the week long peace camp currently taking place in Parliament Square to lobby Brown into following a peaceful foreign policy says: "We'll see what Brown does, but war is still the issue."