Marieha Hussain had actually marched for 3 hours with her household, and the youngsters with them were burning out.
“We opened some snacks to keep them going,” she stated. They became part of a 300,000-strong team at a pro-Palestinian demo in main London on 11 November 2023.
“Then, somebody from my side of the street where I was standing called out and asked: ‘Can I take a picture of your placard?’”
This had not been the very first time she had actually been requested a photo. Her household’s placards, she stated, had actually attracted a great deal of interest.
On one side of the placard was an animation of Suella Braverman, after that the Home Secretary, clothed like Cruella de Vil from 101Dalmatians Ms Hussain stood up the indicator and postured.
“The voice called out, ‘no, not that one, can you turn it around please?’ – and I did.
“And that was it.”
Her account was informed to Westminster Magistrates Court today throughout her two-day test on a cost of a racially worsened public order offense.
She was implicated of this offense– of which she was discovered not guilty on Friday– due to what got on the opposite of that placard.
It was an illustration of a hand tree with coconuts diminishing it; pasted over 2 of those coconuts were the faces of Ms Braverman and of the after that-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak
At the heart of this situation was words “coconut” – and whether maybe thought about racially violent.
Ms Hussain informed the court that on the drive home from the demo, a family members pal messaged to inform her that her image had actually been published by a confidential conservative blog site called Harry’s Place which it was going viral on X (it has actually because been watched greater than 4 million times).
“It doesn’t get more racist than this,” the message stated. “Among anti-racists you get the worst racists of them all.”
Underneath she after that saw a reply from the Metropolitan Police, claiming that they were “actively looking for” her.
Chris Humphreys, a participant of Metropolitan Police personnel operating in the pressure’s interactions group that day, saw the message after the Met was labelled in it. “The account that posted it typically generates a significant response,” Mr Humphreys informed the court. He was phoned call to provide proof in support of the Crown Prosecution Service.
In the 10 months because that day, confidential accounts on social media sites called her a racist while tabloid papers released information of her household and the price of her moms and dads’ home. Ms Hussain, 37, likewise shed her work as a senior high school instructor.
After the Metropolitan Police published that they desired to recognize Ms Hussain, she sought advice from lawyers and willingly went to a police headquarters 3 days later on, on 14 November, she informed the court.
There, she provided a ready declaration describing that she was, what had actually taken place that day, and her factors for making the indicator.
“I am a teacher of almost 10 years standing with an academic background in psychology,” she created in the declaration. “It is exceptionally difficult to convey complex, serious political statements in a nutshell, and we did our best.”
She was not officially billed up until 6 months later on, in May this year. She learnt she was billed from a reporter helping Al Jazeera, she informed the court.
At this factor, the assistance for Ms Hussain from protestors and advocates expanded significantly singing. When she initially showed up at the magistrates court in June– noticeably expecting– to enter her blameless appeal, militants stood outside the court held copycat “coconut” placards.
‘This is our language’
The term “coconut” is promptly recognisable to many individuals from black and Asian areas in the UK.
It is a word with a normally unfavorable significance and can vary from light-hearted exchange to much more extreme objection or disrespects.
What the court needed to emulate was whether, on Ms Hussain’s placard, maybe thought about racially violent.
Prosecutor Jonathan Bryan suggested coconut was a widely known racial slur. “[It has] a very clear meaning – you may be brown on the outside, but you are white on the inside,” Mr Bryan told the court.
“In other words, you’re a ‘race traitor’ – you’re less brown or black than you should be.”
Mr Bryan said that Ms Hussain had crossed the line from legitimate political expression to racial insult.
This was not the first time the term “coconut” has come before the courts: in 2009 Shirley Brown, the first black Liberal Democrat elected to Bristol City Council, used the term to describe Conservative councillor Jay Jethwa during a heated debate about funding for the council’s Legacy Commission.
The following year, in 2010, Ms Brown was convicted of racial harassment for the comment. She was given a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £620 in costs. Mr Bryan referenced Ms Brown’s case during this week’s trial.
For Ms Hussain, one of those who’s been particularly fervent in his support is the writer and anti-racism campaigner Nels Abbey.
“The word ‘coconut’ didn’t fall out of a coconut tree, to quote Kamala Harris’s mum,” Mr Abbey told me after the trial’s first day, adding that the word “fell out of our experience as former colonised people”.
The term emerged as a way of critiquing those who “collaborated with our oppressors”, he said.
“This is our language,” he said. “We share this language because we share a history, we share origins and share a community… You cannot criminalise people’s history, and the language that emerged from that.”
In court, this was echoed by two academic experts in racism who gave evidence in support of Ms Hussain – Prof Gus John and Prof Gargi Bhattacharyya.
They quoted postcolonial theorist Frantz Fanon, Black liberation activist Marcus Garvey, the late poet Benjamin Zephaniah, and comedian Romesh Ranganathan, who has frequently joked that his mum calls him a coconut for not speaking Tamil.
These were citations more commonly heard in a university lecture hall than a courtroom.
The court heard that the investigating team had also contacted three experts in racism to give evidence for the prosecution, but they had all refused. One of those, Black Studies specialist Prof Kehinde Andrews, sent “quite a lengthy response” saying the word was not a racial slur, and asked that this be shared with the CPS.
Prof John told the court he was “disappointed” that the CPS hadn’t called any experts to support their case.
“I’d have wanted to be informed and educated on when coconut is a racist slur,” he said. “I would have loved to see the evidence of that. I’m not aware of that at all.”
Ms Hussain wrote in her statement that “coconut” was “common language, particularly in our culture”.
Asked by her barrister Mr Menon what she meant by that, she answered that she had grown up hearing the word used among South Asians.
“If I’m truly honest, sometimes, when I was younger, my own dad called me a coconut,” she said, prompting laughter from the public gallery.
‘Political satire’
Ms Hussain also argued that her use of the term was a form of political critique against what she said were ” political leaders in high workplace that bolster and press racist plans”.
On Friday afternoon, District Judge Vanessa Lloyd ruled that the placard was ” component of the category of political witticism”, and that the prosecution had ” not confirmed to a criminal requirement that it was violent”.
As the verdict was read out, cheers and whooping erupted from the public gallery while Ms Hussain burst into tears.
Outside the court she said: “The damage done to my reputation and image can never be undone.
“The laws on hate speech must serve to protect us more, but this trial shows that these rules are being weaponised to target ethnic minorities.
“It do without claiming that this experience has actually been agonising for my household and I. Instead of appreciating my maternity I have actually been damned by the media, I have actually shed my profession, I have actually been dragged via the court system.”
But, she said, ” I’m much more established than ever before to proceed utilizing my voice” for Palestinians.
