Marieha Hussain’s placard featuring Sunak and Braverman was political satire: she should never have been hauled in front of a judge to prove it
What do you think of when you hear the words “racially aggravated public order offence”? Someone being called the N-word or P-word, perhaps? An innocent person being threatened with violence or abuse? Are there images forming in your mind of angry, menacing perpetrators? These are reasonable assumptions. But I would wager that your mental catalogue does not include the figure of a smiling brown woman holding up a placard depicting a coconut tree, with pictures of Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman pasted on it.
That woman is Marieha Hussain. Last week, she was in a magistrates court, charged after a picture of her placard at a pro-Palestine march last year was circulated on social media. Individuals and organisations mobilised online and outside the central London court in support of Hussain, and a collective of south Asian diaspora organisations released a statement calling for the “politicised” charges to be dropped. In his defence of Hussain, Rajiv Menon KC argued that the placard was a “political criticism” of Braverman, who “was promoting in different ways a racist political agenda, as evidenced by the Rwanda policy, the racist rhetoric she was using around small boats”, and Rishi Sunak was “either acquiescing to it or being inactive”.
