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”.

Now, you might disagree with that view of Braverman and Sunak, and you might think that even if that opinion of them were accurate, that it’s not very nice to go around calling people coconuts (I know I wouldn’t). But believing that........

© The Guardian