Judges rubberstamp Palestine Action ban exposing UK complicity in genocide

London — Today the Court of Appeal has endorsed the Government’s ban of Palestine Action and overturned the High Court's February ruling that the ban was unlawful. This outcome should not be surprising to anyone, judicial independence is dead and judges are the agents of government policy.

The proscription of Palestine Action was never an aberration. It was a reflection of the fact that counter-terrorism laws are designed to crush any and all dissent. We must be direct about what this represents - a government that has spent two years deepening its diplomatic, military and economic support for an illegal apartheid genocidal state has now secured a judicial ruling that enhances its ability to criminalise British citizens who object to that support. 

Nearly 3,000 people have been arrested. Today's decision means that the threat of prosecution against all of them, and against anyone who continues to express support for Palestine Action, remains alive. The scale of public mobilisation against this ban, the refusal of thousands of people to comply with a politicised designation that on any measure is illegitimate, was not a temporary outburst that today's ruling will now extinguish. Today’s ruling will deepen the conviction of those who already see the gap between what the law permits and what conscience demands.

The fundamental problem is the existence of proscription powers, and the broader counter-terrorism framework that allows the state to redefine political dissent as terrorism whenever that dissent becomes inconvenient. Today's ruling is further evidence that this framework cannot be relied upon to correct itself, and that it must be abolished entirely.

Anas Mustapha, Head of Public Advocacy at CAGE International, said:

"This ruling tells us exactly what these powers are for. They are not safeguards against violence, they are authoritarian tools for crushing dissent. Thousands of people, including pensioners, now continue to live under threat of prosecution for opposing Britain's role in a genocide. That is the reality this judgment protects. No ruling from any court is going to convince people that their conscience is wrong, and no amount of legislation will make support for Palestine disappear. The only sustainable outcome is the abolition of these laws in their entirety."

[ENDS]

​

​

​