UK police accused of being heavy-handed at protest against BBC coverage on Gaza
A protest outside BBC Scotland
Areeb Ullah reports in Middle East Eye on 16 April 2025:
London’s Metropolitan Police is facing accusations of being heavy-handed after three people were “violently” arrested for protesting outside the BBC’s offices over the broadcaster’s coverage of the war on Gaza.
One protester told Middle East Eye that he was repeatedly punched by officers late on Tuesday after police attempted to carry out an arrest.
“The way the police acted was so violent. I’ve never seen this level of brutality towards protesters before,” Rajiv Sinha, the director of Hindus for Human Rights UK, told MEE. “A large group of officers made their way through the crowd in a single-file line to arrest one person. We started pushing back and began chanting ‘this is repression’ as they dragged the protesters away.”
Sinha said the police vastly outnumbered the small crowd, and highlighted footage posted online which appeared to show officers hitting some of those in attendance.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Youth Demand, one of the organisers behind the protest, accused the Metropolitan Police of “extreme policing”. “We were met with extreme policing, but we held it together to rally against the ongoing genocide,” the spokesperson said in a video posted on Instagram.