Free Speech Protest in London

After Tommy Robinson, a leader of the far-right English Defence League, was permanently banned from Twitter, thousands of people marched on Sunday in ‘Day for Freedom’ protest in London to ‘Protect Free Speech’.
A large group of well-known right-wing political commentators, journalists and activists and politicians including Trump-supporter Milo Yiannopoulos have shown their support for Tommy Robinson and attended the ‘Day for Freedom’ rally.
Scuffles break out as thousands descend on capital for far-right rally. Protesters flying national flags and holding placards decrying limits to free expression rallied at Whitehall after marching through central London from Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park.
Robinson called for the demonstration last week in response to Twitter’s decision to ban him for “hateful conduct” after he posted a message saying: “Islam promotes killing people.”
He and several prominent rightwing figures addressed the 2,000-3,000 attendees. Robinson told the crowd: “We couldn’t have done this three years ago, we couldn’t have done this four years ago. We are now mainstream.”
“We decided to focus our efforts on making sure we pull off a large scale, credible event. So we won’t be marching , instead we have an incredible line-up of speakers, performers, videos and content to offer on the day,” Robinson stated.
At the same time, counter-protests are taking place in the same location: the Anti-Fascist Student Network urged their supporters to take the streets to oppose Robinson’s rally.
Lines of police with riot vans separated the protesters from several hundred counter-protesters demonstrating against what they saw as a far-right movement.
Paul Stevenson, 42, from Harrow, said he was marching to “protect freedom of speech”.
|“It’s to protest against all the censorship that’s going on, political correctness, cultural Marxism and attacks on the white, Christian culture, not just in this country but across Europe,” he added.
In his rally speech, Robinson said: “The people of this country have been silenced for 20-30 years with the tag of racists. They have managed to silence people so that they are too scared to speak up when they see things that are wrong.
>Juthy Saha