Speakers Trust have released a new statement about Leanne Mohamad and her winning speech on the persecution of Palestinians.

This follows an action alert from MPACUK and other activists yesterday mobilising people to contact the Trust about their decision to ban Ms Mohamad from the final.

The new statement can be read here and basically says:

• They had to take her video off of YouTube and their website because of all the abuse on there
• They decided against sending her to the final out of their own choice – not due to any external complaints

But this statement only raises more questions:

1) Why couldn’t they just disable the comments on YouTube? No real technical knowledge required to do that (and shouldn’t be that hard if you know how to take a video off of YouTube)

2) Will they reinstate the video of her speech? If yes, when? If not, why?

3) Is it common for Speakers Trust to reveal to outsiders how judges voted for/against a student’s speech and why it did not go through to the Grand Final? If not, why did your CEO, Julie Holness, tell external people that a decision not to progress Ms Mohamad’s speech was “unanimous”?

4) Based on articles in Middle East Monitor and the Jewish Chronicle, your CEO’s comments suggest that Ms Mohamad broke 2 “fundamental rules” which is why she didn’t go through to the final – if that is the case, and the rules apply throughout the competition, then why is she still the regional winner for Redbridge?

5) Could your CEO clarify exactly what she meant when she said “these were precisely our concerns” in a letter to the pro-Israel bloggers who initiated the campaign that led to the “vile and hateful” comments you purport to be protecting Ms Mohamad from?

From the statements that have been put out it seems that the organisation’s actions had nothing to do with protecting Ms Mohamad but rather to do with appeasing those that complained about her speech and trying to cover up their poor handling of this whole thing.

MPACUK have been in contact with Speakers Trust with our questions and will keep you updated on how they respond…

If you haven’t already contacted them about this whole fiasco, please action our alert on this.