The co-founder of Palestine Action challenged a UK ban on the activist group Wednesday that has led to mass arrests and sparked concerns over free speech and civil liberties.
The ban — which makes being a member of the group or supporting it a serious criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison — has resulted in at least 2,300 arrests of demonstrators, according to protest organisers Defend Our Juries.
United Nations rights chief Volker Turk has called the ban “disproportionate and unnecessary”, while Europe’s human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, criticised “excessive limits” on the right to protest.
The UK government proscribed the pro-Palestinian group in July days after activists, protesting the war in Gaza, broke into an air force base in southern England.
Prosecutors have said they caused an estimated £7 million ($9.3 million) of damage to two aircraft.
On the first day of the hearing at London’s High Court, the lawyer for the group’s co-founder, Huda Ammori, argued that the UK had a “long tradition” of civil disobedience.
Raza Husain quoted the example of the suffragettes, who fought for women’s right to vote but “would have been liable to proscription if the Terrorism Act 2000 regime had been in force at the turn of the 20th century”.
The ban has put Palestine Action on a blacklist that also includes Palestinian militants Hamas and the Lebanese Iran-backed group Hezbollah.
Husain added the group’s proscription was “ill-considered, discriminatory … (an) authoritarian abuse of statutory power”.
Those arrested since July include students, teachers, pensioners and even an 83-year-old retired vicar, with many carried away from the protests by police.
According to London’s Met Police, so far 254 out of the more than 2,000 arrested have been charged with a lesser offence which carries a sentence of up to six months.
A small group of about 40 protesters gathered outside the court on Wednesday, waving Palestinian flags and shouting support for Palestine Action.
The interior ministry, or Home Office, has accused Palestine Action of conducting an “escalating campaign” involving “sustained criminal damage”, including to Britain’s national security infrastructure.
It also accuses the group of “intimidation, alleged violence and serious injuries”.
– ‘Not non-violent’ –
The government has been criticised for taking too broad a view of the definition of what constitutes “terrorism”.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, defending the ban in August, said some supporters of the group “don’t know the full nature of this organisation because of court restrictions on reporting while serious prosecutions are under way.
“But it’s really important that no-one is in any doubt that this is not a non-violent organisation,” she said.
Set up in 2020, the group’s stated goal on its now-blocked website is to end “global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”.
It has mainly targeted weapons factories, especially those belonging to the Israeli defence group Elbit.
Since the ban came into force on July 5, protesters have held a string of rallies holding up signs saying: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.”
The government has to show that the ban is not disproportionate.
In written remarks, the Home Office said Wednesday that “the proscription of Palestine Action has not prevented people from protesting in favour of the Palestinian people or against Israel’s actions in Gaza”.
Tom Southerden, law and human rights director at Amnesty International UK, said: “Treating an organisation that was until recently, a direct action protest group, as a terrorist organisation is a fundamental change in how the British state has traditionally treated direct action protest.”
He warned that “the UK definition of terrorism … is so broad” that if the court action against the ban fails it “opens the gates for future governments to use exactly this kind of measure against other direct action protest groups”.
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© Agence France-Presse
