LONDON — Police in London arrested at least 365 people for supporting Palestine Action on Saturday at the latest and largest protest backing the group since the government banned it last month under anti-terror laws.
The UK capital’s Metropolitan Police said it expected to make further arrests at the demonstration in Parliament Square, as organizers claimed only a “fraction” of the hundreds who turned out had been detained.
“That claim simply isn’t true,” the Met said in a statement, noting some of the people there were onlookers or not visibly supporting Palestine Action.
“We are confident that anyone who came to Parliament Square today to hold a placard expressing support for Palestine Action was either arrested or is in the process of being arrested,” it added.
Attendees, bearing signs saying “Oppose genocide, support Palestine Action” and other slogans, applauded those being arrested and shouted “Shame on you” at officers.
“Let them arrest us all,” Richard Bull, 42, a wheelchair user in attendance, told AFP. “This government has gone too far. I have nothing to feel ashamed of.”
A group called Defend Our Juries organized the event as part of what it called an escalation in its “lift the ban” campaign seeking to reverse the government’s decision.
“Once the meaning of ‘terrorism’ is separated from campaigns of violence against a civilian population, and extended to include those causing economic damage or embarrassment to the rich, the powerful and the criminal, then the right to freedom of expression has no meaning and democracy is dead,” the group said on its website.
It said in a press release that it suspected police had been interfering in its attempts to organize opposition to Palestine Action’s ban, noting a web-hosting company shut down its website earlier this week.
London’s Met Police and other UK forces have made scores of similar arrests on previous weekends since the government outlawed Palestine Action on July 5.
Anyone expressing support for a proscribed group risks arrest under UK anti-terror laws.
Police announced this week that the first three people had been charged in the English and Welsh criminal justice system with supporting Palestine Action following their arrests at a July 5 demo.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper moved to ban Palestine Action after activists broke into a British air force base in southern England on June 20 to protest British military support for Israel’s war with Hamas. The activists sprayed red paint into the engines of two tanker planes at the RAF Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire and caused further damage with crowbars.
Palestine Action had previously targeted Israeli defense contractors and other sites in Britain that they believe have links with the Israeli military.
The interior ministry noted ahead of Saturday’s protests that its members were also suspected of other “serious attacks” that involved “violence, significant injuries and extensive criminal damage.”
Critics of the ban, including NGOs like Amnesty International and Greenpeace, have lambasted the move as legal overreach and a threat to free speech.
Amnesty International UK Chief Executive Sacha Deshmukh wrote to Met Police chief Mark Rowley this week urging restraint be exercised when policing people holding placards expressing support for Palestine Action.
The NGO has argued arrests of such people are in breach of international human rights law.
A UK court challenge against the decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terror organization will be heard later this year.