Attempts to stop people including writer Sally Rooney from expressing support for Palestinians facing genocide have been likened by Mary Robinson to the demonisation of opponents of South African apartheid.
Speaking before an event on international law held at the Museum of Literature on Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green, the former president said that over her long career “this is the most difficult time [and] the challenges are more serious than they’ve ever been”.
She said the decision by British publisher Faber not to sell Rooney’s books in the UK over concerns the author’s support for Palestine Action could expose her to legal jeopardy was “a very worrying constraint and repression”.
Robinson, a former UN commissioner for human rights, said the current conflict had been “so complicated by the need to address and combat anti-Semitism, and that is important, but it’s also now constraining genuinely legitimate protest on the Palestinian side”.
Before the event examining the pressures on international law and global accountability, she said “you have to allow people to protest when they see that a genocide is unfolding, that horrible things are happening in the West Bank”.
Continue @ Irish Times.
No comments