LONDON: British police said Sunday that they arrested almost 900 people demonstrating in London against a ban on the group Palestine Action, which has been deemed a terrorist organization by the government.
Almost 1,600 people have now been detained, many for silently holding signs supporting the group, since it was outlawed two months ago. Protesters say the ban on Palestine Action is an unwarranted curb on free speech and the right to protest.
The Metropolitan Police force said 890 people were arrested at Saturday’s demonstration, the vast majority, 857, under the Terrorism Act for supporting a proscribed organization. Some 33 were detained for other offenses, including 17 for assaulting police officers.
Defend Our Juries, the campaign group organizing the protest, said 1,500 people took part in the demonstration outside Parliament, sitting down and holding signs reading “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.”
Within minutes, police began arresting the demonstrators, as bystanders chanted “Shame on you,” and “Met Police, pick a side, justice or genocide.” There were some scuffles and angry exchanges as officers dragged away demonstrators who went limp as they were removed from the crowd.
“In carrying out their duties today, our officers have been punched, kicked, spat on and had objects thrown at them by protesters,” said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Claire Smart, who called the abuse directed at police “intolerable.”
Defend Our Juries said aggression had come from police officers and dismissed claims that protesters had been violent as “frankly laughable.”
More than 700 people were arrested at earlier protests, and 138 have been charged under the Terrorism Act.
Mike Higgins, 62, who is blind and uses a wheelchair, was arrested last month but returned to demonstrate on Saturday.
“And I’m a terrorist? That’s the joke of it,” he said. “I’ve already been arrested under the Terrorism Act and I suspect I will be today.
“Of course I’ll keep coming back. What choice do I have?”
Direct action protests
The government proscribed Palestine Action in July, after activists broke into a Royal Air Force base and vandalized planes to protest against what they called Britain’s support for Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza. The activists sprayed red paint into the engines of two tanker planes and caused further damage with crowbars.
Proscription made it a crime to publicly support the organization. Membership of, or support for, the group is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
Palestine Action has carried out direct action protests in the UK since it formed in 2020, including breaking into facilities owned by Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems UK, and has targeted other sites in Britain that participants believe have links with the Israeli military.
The group has targeted defense companies and national infrastructure, and officials say their actions have caused millions of pounds in damage that affect national security.
Banning the group, then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said, “The assessments are very clear, this is not a nonviolent organization.”
Palestine Action has won approval from the High Court to challenge the ban, a ruling the government is seeking to overturn. The case is ongoing, with a hearing scheduled for Sept. 25.
Supporters say the ban stifles free speech
The UN human rights chief has criticized the British government’s stance, saying the new law “misuses the gravity and impact of terrorism.”
The decision to designate Palestine Action as a terrorist group “raises serious concerns that counterterrorism laws are being applied to conduct that is not terrorist in nature, and risks hindering the legitimate exercise of fundamental freedoms across the UK,” Volker Türk warned.
He added that according to international standards, terrorist acts should be confined to crimes such as those intended to cause death or serious injury or the taking of hostages.
Huda Ammori, Palestine Action’s co-founder, has condemned the government’s decision to ban it as “catastrophic” for civil liberties, leading to a “much wider chilling effect on freedom of speech.”
The group has been supported by prominent cultural figures including bestselling Irish author Sally Rooney, who said she planned to use the proceeds of her work “to keep backing Palestine Action and direct action against genocide.”
Israel — founded in part as a refuge in the wake of the Holocaust, when some 6 million European Jews were murdered — vehemently denies it is committing genocide.
Britain’s government stressed that proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist group does not affect other lawful groups — including pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel voices — campaigning or peacefully protesting.
About 20,000 people, by a police estimate, attended a separate pro-Palestinian march in London on Saturday.
Police arrest almost 900 at London protest supporting banned group Palestine Action
https://arab.news/rza9h
Police arrest almost 900 at London protest supporting banned group Palestine Action
- Almost 1,600 people have now been detained, many for silently holding signs supporting the group, since it was outlawed two months ago
Rubio defends US ouster of Venezuela’s Maduro to Caribbean leaders unsettled by Trump policies
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts and Nevis: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday defended the Trump administration’s military operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, telling Caribbean leaders, many of whom objected to that move, that the country and the region were better off as a result.
Speaking to leaders from the 15-member Caribbean Community bloc at a summit in the country of St. Kitts and Nevis, Rubio brushed aside concerns about the legality of Maduro’s capture last month that have been raised among Venezuela’s island-state neighbors and others.
“Irrespective of how some of you may have individually felt about our operations and our policy toward Venezuela, I will tell you this, and I will tell you this without any apology or without any apprehension: Venezuela is better off today than it was eight weeks ago,” Rubio told the leaders in a closed-door meeting, according to a transcript of his remarks later distributed by the US State Department.
Rubio said that since Maduro’s ouster and the effective takeover of Venezuela’s oil sector by the United States, the interim authorities in the South American country have made “substantial” progress in improving conditions by doing “things that eight or nine weeks ago would have been unimaginable.”
The Caribbean leaders have gathered to debate pressing issues in a region that President Donald Trump has targeted for a 21st-century incarnation of the Monroe Doctrine meant to ensure Washington’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The Republican administration has declared a focus closer to home even as Washington increasingly has been preoccupied by the possibility of a US military attack on Iran.
Rubio downplays antagonism in US regional push
In his remarks to the group, America’s top diplomat tried to play down any antagonistic intent in what Trump has referred to as the “Donroe Doctrine.” Rubio said the administration wants to strengthen ties with the region in the wake of the Venezuela operation and ensure that issues such as crime and economic opportunities are jointly addressed.
“I am very happy to be in an administration that’s giving priority to the Western Hemisphere after largely being ignored for a very long time,” Rubio said. “We share common opportunities, and we share some common challenges. And that’s what we hope to confront.”
He said transnational criminal organizations pose the biggest threat to the Caribbean while recognizing that many are buying weapons from the United States, a problem he said authorities are tackling.
Rubio also said the US and the Caribbean can work together on economic advancement and energy issues, especially because many leaders at the four-day summit have energy resources they seek to explore. “We want to be your partner in that regard,” he said.
Rubio said the US recognizes the need for fair, democratic elections in Venezuela, which lies just miles away from Trinidad and Tobago at the closest point.
“We do believe that a prosperous, free Venezuela who’s governed by a legitimate government who has the interests of their people in mind could also be an extraordinary partner and asset to many of the countries represented here today in terms of energy needs and the like, and also one less source of instability in the region,” he said.
Rubio added: “We view our security, our prosperity, our stability to be intricately tied to yours.”
Trump plays up Maduro’s ouster
Trump, in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, called the operation that spirited Maduro out of Venezuela to face drug trafficking charges in New York “an absolutely colossal victory for the security of the United States.”
The US had built up the largest military presence in the Caribbean Sea in generations before the Jan. 3 raid. That has now been exceeded by the surge of American warships and aircraft to the Middle East as the administration pressures Iran to make a deal over its nuclear program.
In the Caribbean, Trump has stepped up aggressive tactics to combat alleged drug smuggling with a series of strikes on boats that have killed over 150 people and he has tightened pressure on Cuba. Regional leaders have complained about administration demands for nations to accept third-country deportees from the US and to chill relations with China.
One regional leader who has backed the US escalation is Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, whom Rubio thanked for her “public support for US military operations in the South Caribbean Sea,” the State Department said.
Persad-Bissessar told reporters that her conversation with Rubio focused on “Haiti; we talked about Cuba of course; we talked about engagements with Venezuela and the way forward.”
She was asked if she considered the latest US military strikes in Caribbean waters as extrajudicial killings: “I don’t think they are, and if they are, we will find out, but our legal advice is they are not.”
Rubio had other one-on-one meetings with heads of government, including from St. Kitts and Nevis, Haiti, Jamaica and Guyana.
Caribbean leaders point to shifting global order
Trump said during the State of the Union that his administration is “restoring American security and dominance in the Western Hemisphere, acting to secure our national interests and defend our country from violence, drugs, terrorism and foreign interference.”
Terrance Drew, prime minister of St. Kitts and Nevis and chair of the Caribbean Community bloc, said the region “stands at a decisive hour” and that “the global order is shifting.”
Drew and other leaders said Cuba’s humanitarian situation must be addressed.
“It must be clear that a prolonged crisis in Cuba will not remain confined to Cuba,” Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness warned. “It will affect migration, security and economic stability across the Caribbean basin.”
The US Treasury Department on Wednesday slightly eased restrictions on the sale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, which instituted austere fuel-saving measures in the weeks after the US raid in Venezuela.
That move came hours before Cuba’s government announced that its soldiers killed four people aboard a speedboat registered in Florida that had opened fire on officers in Cuban waters.
