Legal and human rights experts pressure UK government not to ban Palestine Action

UN human rights experts and hundreds of lawyers are among those urging the UK Home Secretary not to designate direct action protest group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

Both the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) lawyers’ group and the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers told Home Secretary Yvonne Cooper that proscribing the group would set a dangerous precedent as it would conflate protest with terrorism.

Several UN human rights experts also urged the government not to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation under the Terrorism Act 2000.

“We are concerned at the unjustified labelling of a political protest movement as ‘terrorist’,” the experts said in a statement.

“According to international standards, acts of protest that damage property, but are not intended to kill or injure people, should not be treated as terrorism.”

The UK government says some members have allegedly caused criminal damage to property at military bases and arms companies.