UK ban on Palestine Action at odds with international law, says UN rights chief | Protest

The UK authorities’s ban on Palestine Motion limits the rights and freedoms of individuals within the UK and is at odds with worldwide regulation, the UN human rights chief has stated.Volker Türk, the UN human rights commissioner, stated ministers’ determination to designate the group a terrorist organisation was “disproportionate and pointless” and referred to as on them to rescind it.In an announcement on Friday, he stated the ban amounted to an “impermissible restriction” of individuals’s rights to freedom of expression and meeting that was “at odds with the UK’s obligations below worldwide human rights regulation”.He added that the choice restricted the rights of individuals concerned with Palestine Motion “who haven’t themselves engaged in any underlying felony exercise however moderately exercised their rights to freedom of expression, peaceable meeting and affiliation”.Türk stated it might “result in additional chilling impact on the lawful train of those rights by many individuals” and that the UK authorities ought to halt any police and authorized proceedings towards protesters who’ve been arrested on the premise of the proscription.The Guardian has contacted the House Workplace for remark.Dozens of individuals have been arrested for holding placards in help of Palestine Motion for the reason that group was proscribed on 5 July.In a case reported by the Guardian on Thursday, an 80-year-old lady from Somerset was arrested for holding a placard at a pro-Palestine rally and was held by police for nearly 27 hours, with officers forcing their method into her home and looking it.Marianne Sorrell stated she felt “very traumatised” after officers eliminated 19 objects from her dwelling, together with iPads, a Palestine flag, books on Palestine, materials associated to Extinction Insurrection and the local weather disaster, in addition to drumsticks for – and a belt that holds – her samba drum.In one other case, armed police threatened to arrest a 42-year-old lady, Laura Murton, in Kent, for supporting a proscribed organisation as a result of she was holding a Palestinian flag and had indicators saying “Free Gaza” and “Israel is committing genocide”.skip previous publication promotionGet the day’s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you each morningPrivacy Discover: Newsletters could comprise information about charities, on-line advertisements, and content material funded by outdoors events. For extra data see our Privateness Coverage. We use Google reCaptcha to guard our web site and the Google Privateness Coverage and Phrases of Service apply.after publication promotionSeveral UN consultants, civil liberties teams, cultural figures and lots of of legal professionals have condemned the ban as draconian and stated it units a harmful precedent by conflating protest with terrorism. Concern has additionally been expressed by some House Workplace employees.Ministers proscribed the group below the Terrorism Act 2000 after a few of its members broke right into a army airfield in June and spray-painted two RAF plane. The ban implies that being a member of Palestine Motion or inviting help for it carries a most sentence of 14 years in jail.Palestine Motion is the primary direct motion protest group to be banned below the Terrorism Act, inserting it in the identical class as Islamic State, al-Qaida and the far-right group Nationwide Motion.