Lawmakers in the United Kingdom have voted to proscribe campaign group Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation, raising fears about freedom of expression in the country.
Parliament voted 385-26 in favour of the measure against the group on Wednesday, the move coming after its activists broke into a military base last month and sprayed red paint on two planes in protest at the UK’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Critics decried the chilling effect of the ban, which puts Palestine Action on a par with armed groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) in the UK, making it a criminal offence to support or be part of the protest group.
“Let us be clear: to equate a spray can of paint with a suicide bomb isn’t just absurd, it is grotesque. It is a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity, and suppress the truth,” said lawmaker Zarah Sultana, a member of the ruling Labour party.
Zarah Sultana not only stands against the proscription of our group, she declares we are all Palestine Action❤️ pic. twitter. com/IyKzkFHfpC
Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive of Amnesty International UK, slammed the move as “unprecedented legal overreach”, pointing out that it gave the authorities “massive powers to arrest and detain people, suppress speech and reporting, conduct surveillance and take other measures”.
“Using them against a direct-action protest group is an egregious abuse of what they were created for,” he said.
Reporting from London, Al Jazeera’s Milena Veselinovic said that protesters gathering outside Westminster had showed “defiance”.
“[They are] saying that they would still find a way to show support and hopefully not get arrested. But even if they do get arrested, many of them have told us that it is not the worst thing in the world,” she said.
The proscription order will reach parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, on Thursday. If approved there, the ban on Palestine Action would become effective in the following days.
The group, which has called its proscription unjustified and an “abuse of power,” has challenged the decision in court and an urgent hearing is expected on Friday.
Lawmakers ‘boxed in’ by vote
Launched in July 2020, Palestine Action says it uses “disruptive tactics” to target “corporate enablers” and companies involved in weapons manufacture for Israel, such as Israel-based Elbit Systems and French multinational Thales.
The British government has accused the group of causing millions of pounds of damage through its actions.
On Tuesday, the group said its activists had blocked the entrance to an Elbit site in Bristol, southwestern England. Other members reportedly occupied the rooftop of a subcontracting firm in Suffolk, eastern England, that the group had linked to Elbit.
United Nations experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council had previously urged the UK government to reconsider its threat to proscribe the group, arguing that acts of property damage without the intention to endanger life should not be considered “terrorism”.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, the UK’s interior minister, says that violence and criminal damage have no place in legitimate protest, and that a zero-tolerance approach was necessary for national security.
In addition to Palestine Action, the proscription order approved by parliament includes neo-Nazi group Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement, a white supremacist group which seeks to create a new Russian imperial state.
Al Jazeera’s Veselinovic said lawmakers had felt “boxed in” by the vote, feeling that they had no choice but to proscribe all three organisations.
