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Now the UN has intervened in Palestine Action’s terror ban scandal

Amid political and media hostility, and the Labour Party government’s attempts to ban them as a terror group, Palestine Action has now received support from the UN.

The UN intervenes over Palestine Action

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

“These offences would criminalise legitimate activities by innocent members of the group that do not contribute in any way to property damage by other members, let alone ‘terrorism’ which, if properly defined, the group has not committed,” they said.

Announcing that they have been in contact with the UK Government in relation to this issue, the experts said “individuals could be prosecuted for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and opinion, assembly, association and participation in political life. This would have a chilling effect on political protest and advocacy generally in relation to defending human rights in Palestine.”

They added that “mere property damage, without endangering life, is not sufficiently serious to qualify as terrorism” and highlighted that “the UK supported this approach in voting for Security Council resolution 1566 in 2004”.

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner press release has just been released and can be found here.

A gross abuse of power

This comes as the coalition of organisations who have held all of the national marches for Palestine announce “Emergency Protest – Defend the Right to Protest – ‘Don’t ban Palestine Action” outside Parliament tomorrow, the day of the vote, at 1800 on Wednesday 2 July.

They urge the public to “join us to protest this government’s attacks on the right to protest and to demand that MPs vote against the plans to proscribe Palestine Action”:

The Home Secretary has published the draft order which will be voted on tomorrow, which bundles Palestine Action – a domestic civil disobedience protest group – with foreign neo-Nazi organisations (the Moldovan ‘Maniacs Murder Cult’ and the Russian ‘Imperialist Movement’).

Parliamentarians will be given just minutes to consider each case, with all three proscription orders being debated and voted on together under a single statutory instrument. Palestine Action described this as an “abuse of power” which borrows from “Trump’s playbook to circumvent democratic debate and accountability by effectively proscribing Palestine Action via the backdoor without proper Parliamentary consideration”.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

This post was originally published on Canary.