(UK) How woman with coconut placard was tracked down, taken to court - and acquitted

Source: BBC

How woman with coconut placard was tracked down, taken to court - and acquitted

14 September 2024

Ashitha Nagesh
Community affairs correspondent•@ashnagesh

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Her account was told to Westminster Magistrates Court this week during her two-day trial on a charge of a racially aggravated public order offence.

She was accused of this offence – of which she was found not guilty on Friday – because of what was on the other side of that placard.

It was a drawing of a palm tree with coconuts falling off it; pasted over two of those coconuts were the faces of Ms Braverman and of the then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

At the heart of this case was the word “coconut” - and whether it could be considered racially abusive.

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“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.

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Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgwew5v4qyo


The photo of Ms Hussain holding her placard was posted online by an anonymous blog (Metropolitan Police)