On 20 June, members of Palestine Action broke into a Royal Airforce base at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, going on to spray paint two military aircraft activists claimed were being used in “direct participation in the commission of genocide and war crimes across the Middle East.”  This was deemed so horrible as to draw the ire of then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who went on to invoke section 3 of the Terrorism Act to proscribe the organisation.  

At the time, it seemed impulsive, rash and most likely intended to placate Israeli voices that something was being done about these bleeding hearts in Albion.  Toby Cadman, Member of the International Bar Association’s War Crimes Committee Advisory Board, was in no doubt that the proscription was fashioned “as a blunt instrument to silence certain voices on Palestine at a moment when public opinion and government policy are sharply at odds.”

It did not take long for those well versed about human rights to protest this scrappy measure as absurd and needlessly authoritarian.  The UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, counting among their number Francesca Albanese, Ben Saul and Irene Khan, issued a press release in early July expressing their bafflement at the proscription.  “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.”  Since the addition of Palestine Action to the naughty list of outlawed organisations, over 2,200 arrests have been made citing terrorism legislation, with 254 people charged with........

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