Critics say ban on activist group stifles freedom of speech and meeting and goals to curb pro-Palestine demonstrations.
Police in London say they’ve arrested at the least 200 folks at a protest in help of the group Palestine Action, which was categorised as a “terror organisation” by the British authorities final month.
The Metropolitan Police mentioned on Saturday that 200 demonstrators had been arrested at Parliament Sq. “for displaying help for a proscribed organisation”.
“It would take time, however we are going to arrest anybody expressing help for Palestine Motion,” the police drive mentioned in an earlier put up on X.
The arrests are the ground tremor at a sequence of protests denouncing the federal government’s ban on Palestine Motion, a transfer critics say infringes on freedom of speech and the fitting to protest, in addition to goals to stifle demonstrations towards Israel’s battle on the Gaza Strip.
Underneath the Terrorism Act 2000, membership in or support for the group is now a prison offence punishable by as much as 14 years in jail.
Reporting from Parliament Sq. on Saturday, Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego mentioned the specter of arrest or punishment “hasn’t deterred any supporters” of Palestine Motion from expressing their backing for the group.
“One thing so simple as carrying a t-shirt saying, ‘I help Palestine Motion’, and even having that written on a sheet of paper” may result in an arrest, Gallego mentioned.
Upfront of Saturday’s protest, greater than 200 folks had been detained in a wave of demonstrations throughout the UK denouncing the ban because it got here into drive in July.
Greater than 350 lecturers from world wide signed onto an open letter this week applauding a “rising marketing campaign of collective defiance” towards the choice by Residence Secretary Yvette Cooper to proscribe Palestine Motion.
The signatories “deplore the repressive penalties that this ban has already had, and are particularly involved in regards to the doubtless influence of Cooper’s ban on universities throughout the UK and past”, the letter learn.
Israeli historian and College of Exeter professor Ilan Pappe, Goldsmiths professor Eyal Weizman, and political thinkers Michael Hardt and Jaqueline Rose have been amongst those that signed the letter.
In the meantime, a separate march organised by the Palestine Coalition group was additionally held in London on Saturday.
The Metropolitan Police mentioned one particular person had been arrested at that march from Russell Sq. to Whitehall for displaying a banner in help of Palestine Motion.
Amnesty Worldwide UK has condemned the arrest of peaceable protesters solely for holding indicators, saying such motion constitutes “a violation of the UK’s worldwide obligations to guard the rights of freedom of expression and peaceable meeting”.
BREAKING: Quakers are actually being arrested at Parliament Sq. for holding indicators which say “I oppose genocide. I help Palestine Motion”
There are nonetheless lots of right here who’re collectively opposing genocide and the unjust ban of the direct motion group. pic.twitter.com/YcfrV8vZ4l
— Defend our Juries (@DefendourJuries) August 9, 2025
Palestine Motion has more and more focused Israel-linked firms within the UK, typically spraying pink paint, blocking entrances or damaging gear.
The group accuses the UK’s authorities of complicity in what it says are Israeli battle crimes in Gaza, the place Israel’s bombardment and blockade have killed tens of 1000’s of Palestinians since October 2023.
The British authorities issued the ban after Palestine Motion broke into a military airbase in June and broken two Airbus Voyager plane, used for air-to-air refuelling.
Manaal Siddiqui, a spokesperson for Palestine Motion, advised Al Jazeera that the plane “can be utilized to refuel and have been used to refuel Israeli fighter jets”.
In line with the group, planes from the Brize Norton base additionally fly to a British Air Power base in Cyprus to then be dispatched to gather intelligence shared with the Israeli authorities.