Marieha Hussain says 'coconut' trial highlights UK's institutional racism reality

LONDON: British Pakistani school teacher and campaigner Marieha Hussain has expressed relief after her honourable acquittal of a racially aggravated public order offence over the ‘coconut’ placard. However, she questioned the role of Britain’s institutions in prosecuting her for criticising former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman.

Last week, a judge at the Westminster Magistrates' Court declared that Hussain was not guilty of the racially aggravated public order offence and that she was honest and consistent in her account and her views.

In November last year, the Metropolitan Police published her “coconut” placard picture — taken during a march for Palestine and published first by the pro-Zionism blog "Harry’s place" — asking the public for help to identify her. 

Immediately afterwards, she was charged by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), lost her job, had her family’s home address published by the right-wing media, and her house was besieged, resulting in her entire family being harassed.

Speaking to The News and Geo News at her home in High Wycombe, Hussain said that she has no regrets about carrying the placard, would continue to campaign for justice for Palestinians and would never shy away from calling out racism and Islamophobia.

She said: “I made the placard myself, showing a palm tree with coconuts, Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman underneath. This meant that Rishi and Suella were coconuts, brown on the outside and white on the inside. The court accepted it was a political critique and not racist. The placard was a criticism of their racist and Islamophobic policies that were harmful only to the black people, brown people, immigrants and particularly to the Muslim communities.”

Hussain, a mother of two young children, who was dragged through court last week while nine months pregnant, said the entire ordeal had been extremely stressful for her and her family.

She shared: “It was very stressful. We were afraid and scared. We were besieged by the right-wing, racist media. Our lawyers and campaigning team at the CAGE charity supported us a lot. They understood we had done nothing wrong and that we would win in the end."

The right-wing media published addresses and pictures of her father who is a consultant dermatologist with the National Health Service (NHS) and set up camps outside his home. “The racist media put out his pictures and shared details of my parents’ house. My father was not in the UK event at the time of the protest but he was attacked. My whole family came together and supported me. When the judge found me not guilty, all of us were emotional, we cried and hugged each other in the court.”

Hussain said the Israeli government and the lobbies working for it campaigned for her arrest and prosecution to suppress the pro-Palestine voices. 

“It emerged during the trial that it was a pro-Zionism and anti-Palestine blog called Harry's Place, run from Washington DC, that first published my picture with the placard and then the Metropolitan police used that picture to hunt me. Israel lobbied against me to have me charged and convicted. The London police acted swiftly against me and used hate speech laws against me to take me to the trial. They were unable to produce a single witness to confirm that my placard was racist in nature.”

Hussain lamented that "institutional racism has grown in the UK over the years and her case is a big example of that." 

She said: “In the last ten years I have been protesting at the Palestine marches so I was aware of how things work out. We understood how double standards work and how laws are heavily against ethnic minorities, especially Muslims. I made the placard against Rishi and Suella because they spoke against Muslims, ethnic minorities, homeless and vulnerable people. I have no regrets.”

In the trial, the prosecution claimed “coconut” was a well-known racial slur. “[It has] a very clear meaning – you may be brown on the outside, but you are white on the inside,” said the prosecutor, Jonathan Bryan. “In other words, you’re a ‘race traitor’ – you’re less brown or black than you should be.”

However, Hussain argued that “coconut” was a “common language, particularly in our culture” and, in reference to the placard, a form of political critique. “It’s something we just grew up with,” she said. “It was flung around easily … I remember my father calling me a coconut in my teen years.”

The district judge, Vanessa Lloyd, ruled the placard was “part of the genre of political satire” and the prosecution had “not proved to a criminal standard that it was abusive”.

Hussain said that she does not doubt that she would never have been prosecuted if she was not a Muslim, Pakistani and brown-origin woman. “This case speaks of double standards and hypocrisy. Millionaire Tory donor Frank Hester said on record that she wanted to shoot the respected, anti-racism Black MP Diane Abbot but the CPS did nothing and have been silent for months now but the police and the CPS put me through a hell within minutes. I will not give up.”

CAGE International said that the not guilty verdict of Marieha Hussain handed down by District Judge Vanessa Lloyd was a return to sanity, for what was always a politically motivated prosecution aimed at silencing criticism of politicians complicit in the “Gaza genocide”.

Naila Ahmed, Head of Campaigns at CAGE International said: “Marieha's ordeal highlights the sinister methods the British state is using to silence and intimidate its own citizens' free speech, to protect a foreign nation’s genocidal war. Marieha endured months of harassment, including an abusive police interview, late-night police visits, and a smear campaign in the media that led to her losing her job and temporarily relocating her family for safety. It’s scandalous that a heavily pregnant mother ever needed to stand trial for expressing a political opinion. This prosecution has been vindictive from the very start. It will be a huge relief for Marieha and her family that this ordeal is now over and she can put all this behind her.

“The state is increasingly exploring insidious ways to prosecute activists, especially those taking action for Palestine. We hope this verdict puts a stop to these sorts of politicised prosecutions and especially leads to the dropping of charges against CAGE 6 that are accused of the same alleged offence. However, we will not be silenced in exposing the war crimes and genocide being committed by the apartheid Israeli state — Palestine will be free.”