Zarah Sultana speaking after a march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, from Russell Square to Whitehall in central London, June 21, 2025
This week, MPs shamefully approved the proscription of Palestine Action. Several challenged the move in the Commons. Zarah Sultana, Independent MP for Coventry South, gave an outstanding speech in condemnation. Because of the exceptional gravity of the issue, we reproduce her speech, lightly edited, here.
TWENTY-ONE years ago, a human rights barrister … defended an activist who broke into RAF Fairford trying to disable a bomber to prevent war crimes in Iraq. That became a landmark case in lawful, non-violent direct action against an illegal war. That barrister is now our Prime Minister, Keir Starmer KC. He argued that it was not terrorism, but conscience.
Fast-forward to June 20 2025: two Palestine Action activists entered RAF Brize Norton and sprayed red paint — red paint, not fire — on aircraft linked to surveillance flights over Gaza. Instead of prosecuting them for criminal damage, the Home Secretary is using the Terrorism Act 2000 to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group.
This is an unprecedented and dangerous overreach of the state. Never before in Britain has it been a crime to simply support a group.
Palestine Action’s real crime is shutting down Elbit Systems sites that arm the Israeli military; its true offence is being audacious enough to expose the blood-soaked ties between this government and the genocidal Israeli apartheid state and its war machine.
Let us be clear: to equate a spray can of paint with a suicide bomb is not just absurd; it is grotesque. It is a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity and suppress the truth.
Amnesty International, Liberty, over 266 senior lawyers and UN special rapporteurs have all opposed these draconian measures. Under this order, anyone expressing moral support for a proscribed group could face 14 years in prison. That includes wearing a badge, wearing a T-shirt, sharing a post or calling for de-proscription.
And journalists have no exemption either: there is no legal protection for reporting favourably, even factually, about Palestine Action.
Let us not forget what is happening in Gaza, where the real crimes are being ignored: hospitals bombed, children starved, and tens of thousands of people killed. Palestinian children now suffer more amputations per capita than children anywhere else on Earth.
Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, and the Israeli Prime Minister faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, yet the government’s response is to criminalise solidarity and to continue exporting lethal F-35 jets that are decimating Gaza.
We also have to understand the history of this country and what built our democracy: the tradition of civil disobedience that includes the suffragettes, without whom I would not have the vote, let alone the privilege of being here as an MP.
Even those who oppose Palestine Action’s tactics must recognise the vast gulf between criminal damage and terrorism. If this order passes, what and who is next — climate protesters, striking workers, feminists in the street?
Already we have seen a wider crackdown on our civil liberties — musicians censored, journalists arrested, and demonstrators, including MPs sitting here, harassed — and now this government want to use anti-terror laws to make peaceful protest itself a crime. If our democratic institutions functioned as they should, none of this would be necessary.
If this proscription passes, we have to understand that no campaign will be safe tomorrow. We have to recognise that this will go down as a dark day in our country’s history … People will ask, “Which side were you on?” and I stand with the millions of people who oppose genocide, because I am one of them. I oppose the blood-soaked hands of this government trying to silence us. So I say this loudly and proudly: we are all Palestine…
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide.
The UK government has quietly dropped its legal battle to uphold a law that allowed police to arrest peaceful protesters | Seiya Tanase/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Labour has quietly dropped legal fight over unlawful crackdown on protest. But what about those already arrested?
Two years ago, Suella Braverman made a law she had no power to make.
Her new law fundamentally changed the threshold at which police could impose conditions on a protest in England and Wales. It went from anything that caused ‘serious disruption’ – itself a vague phrase that Braverman was asked to define but didn’t – to anything that caused ‘more than minor’ disruption.
Now, finally, those laws have been quashed. We at Liberty launched legal action against the government in June 2023, and five judges over two hearings have since agreed with us that the measures were unlawful and should never have been introduced in the first place.
This week, the Labour government quietly dropped its appeal over those court rulings. The law now reverts back to what it originally was. Police can no longer intervene in protests on trivial grounds, such as a person blocking the entrance to a hotel where a fossil fuel conference is taking place for a matter of minutes – an act for which Greta Thunberg was arrested and later acquitted.
At Liberty, we took action against these laws not just because they were undemocratic and unlawful, but because of the real human impact they had on protesters and non-protesters across the country.
Take Susan* for example, who was wrongly arrested in January. Susan had gone to a vigil for Palestine in the morning, but left to go for lunch. As she was on her way to the shops with friends, she asked the police which way to go, and they directed her back into the protest area. A few minutes later, Susan was caught up in a kettle as the area had conditions imposed on it under these laws.
Susan was arrested, held in custody first on a coach for three hours, and then in a cell for the rest of the 24-hour period that a person can be detained for without charge. She was unable to even call home to tell her son she wouldn’t be allowed home that evening until 10pm.
Eventually, Susan was told that no further action would be taken against her, as was the case for dozens of others who got caught up in this injustice. Despite this, there have been long-lasting effects. In her own words, this has had a huge impact on her mental health. She feels scared for her family’s safety. She has lost all optimism, when she did nothing wrong in the first place.
What makes Susan’s case even worse is that the legislation had already been ruled unlawful at the point she was arrested. Just a few months earlier, the Labour government had chosen to appeal the court’s original decision that the Conservatives acted unlawfully. This is despite Labour’s home secretary, Yvette Cooper, having vocally opposed these same laws when she was in opposition.
Now, the government has finally accepted defeat and has decided to drop its appeal. This is a huge victory for democracy and our right to protest.
Conservative ministers loudly championed free speech – right up until they outlawed it. Now, we’re all at risk
Through successive government acts and rhetoric, the ways in which we can protest have been narrowed. Restrictions have been placed on how we protest, and even how noisy a protest can be. And as we’ve seen recently, the sentences given out to protesters have only got longer and harsher.
This cannot go on. We need a reset on the way protest is treated, because it is leading to situations like Susan’s, where vague laws are causing very real damage.
If we’ve learnt anything from our legal action, it is that justice is possible. But, as Susan’s experience shows, there is still further justice that needs to be gained.
These laws should never have been made, and so, quite clearly, every incident under them must be looked at. There has to be an urgent review of every arrest and conviction made under these regulations.
“Our communities are being kidnapped and disappeared,” say activists protesting ICE raids throughout the country
US President Donald Trump sent in the military to suppress anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles this past weekend, but instead of stopping the protest movement in its tracks, demonstrations have taken place in cities across the entire United States to reject Trump’s immigration policies and crackdown.
Since protests erupted against immigration raids in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon, they have spread to cities throughout the US, including New York City, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Boston, and Atlanta.
Protesters rally in Boston outside of the Massachusetts State House on June 10 (Photo: Micah Fong)
As the Trump administration scrambles to meet mass deportations quotas, with officials ramping up the immigration enforcement arrest quota to 3,000 per day, ICE operations have escalated to new heights. In what activists have called “ICE terror” against immigrant communities, federal agents have taken more extreme measures including arresting young family members in “collateral arrests,” arresting immigrants seeking legal paths to staying in the country at immigration court hearings, and conducting militarized raids on workplaces.
These tactics have produced some results for Trump’s mass deportation regime: for the first time since 2019, the total number of ICE detainees has surpassed 50,000.
Momentum builds against Trump’s immigration policies
On Tuesday, June 10, thousands of people rallied in New York City, filling the streets by ICE headquarters at 26 Federal Plaza.
“We’re all out here today because like me, you are seeing your communities disappear,” said Cathy Rojas, a public school teacher in Queens. “Our communities are being kidnapped and disappeared. And I don’t use the word kidnap lightly. I use that with a point, because people are not being arrested, when all their constitutional rights are being violated, when all the laws are being broken. When they are put in concentration camps. When they are put in detention centers that violate their human rights, they are being kidnapped. They are not being arrested.”
Activists gather in front of US immigration court in Manhattan (Photo: Wyatt Souers)
Demonstrators marched through the streets of downtown Manhattan up to US Immigration Court on Varick Street, shouting chants in defense of immigrant rights and against Trump.
In Chicago, thousands marched on June 10 after rallying in Federal Plaza. Demonstrators held signs reading “ICE out of Chicago” as some held a banner reading “El pueblo unido defenderá a las familias migrantes!”
Thousands march through Chicago on June 10 (Photo: Emma Noelke)
Protests continue in Los Angeles
Protests continued in Los Angeles despite repressive measures from local and national government. Since Sunday, the Trump administration had deployed 4,000 National Guard troops to the city, as well as 700 marines. LA’s Mayor Karen Bass, despite denouncing the ICE raids and Trump’s deployment of the National Guard, imposed a curfew for 8 pm local time.
Demonstrations took place in Los Angeles and the surrounding area, with protests in a crowded Whittier City Council meeting on Tuesday, and activists reporting that they successfully pushed ICE agents out of a hotel in Arcadia.
More protests are set to be held in the Los Angeles area on Wednesday, June 11, including at Pershing Square in DTLA in the evening.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Armed state policeman in Bremen, Germany. Photo: Wikicommons
The German state has unleashed a fierce and sweeping crackdown on the Palestine solidarity movement in the country.
Germany’s policy of harsh repression of any expression of solidarity with Palestine and the struggle of the Palestinian people has continued unabated. In their attempt to silence all mentions of Palestine, German authorities have canceled events, censored activists and academics, violently repressed protests, and passed new legislation to further undermine support for Palestine solidarity.
However, despite their best efforts, people in Germany continue to defy what they see as illegitimate bans on speech and activity, and continue to express support for the Palestinian cause.
2024 ends with new attacks
In November 2024, the German parliament had passed a so-called “antisemitism resolution,” which though non-binding, sought to stifle any domestic activity to discourage participation in pro-Palestine movements.
At the beginning of December, Ramsis Kilani was expelled from the Left Party (Die Linke). The young Palestinian, who lost his father, stepmother and five siblings–ages four through twelve–in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip in 2014, was accused of “relativizing Hamas terror, selectively criticizing violence against women as a weapon of war, and rejecting Israel’s right to exist.”
Two weeks later, an “anti-colonial and peace Christmas market” in the west German city of Darmstadt provided the opportunity for several well-known politicians, the media, the local chapter of the “Central Council of Jews in Germany” and “concerned” evangelicals to file criminal charges and even make death threats towards the local Palestine group and church congregation that were jointly responsible for the Christmas market.
A raid to ban a no-longer-existing solidarity group
Less than a week later, on January 22, the police stormed several apartments in Frankfurt and Darmstadt. The reason given was to secure evidence to help ban the association “Palästina e.V.” However, the group had already dissolved in November 2024 and no longer existed.
Hitting children costs 800 euros
On January 24, a court dropped a case against a teacher who had punched a 16-year-old student in the face at a school in the Neukölln borough of Berlin on October 9, 2023. The teenager was attacked for bringing a Palestinian flag to school and displaying it in the playground. The fine for a teacher physically assaulting a minor in public was set by the court at just 800 euros. While the teacher has been on sick leave ever since–i.e. presumably on vacation–the student had to change schools. It is still unclear whether legal action will be taken against the student, for responding to the teacher’s assault by kicking him.
Further professional bans are being prepared
In line with the above court decision, the following week the German parliament passed a resolution that was ostensibly directed against “antisemitism and hostility towards Israel in schools and universities.” In reality, it was an addition to–and tightening of–the previous antisemitism resolution of November 2024. However, unlike the earlier resolution, this parliamentary motion received hardly any public attention and so the relatively broad criticism that had been voiced in October and November, which had extended into bourgeois circles, failed to materialize.
The new resolution is a massive attack on the freedom of research and science in Germany. It promotes the cooperation of teaching institutions with repressive and surveillance authorities, and new professional bans (Berufsverbote), which have a long and dark anti-communist tradition in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Arabic? Forbidden!
At the beginning of February, the Berlin police issued language restrictions for Palestine demonstrations: speeches, posters, slogans and music are only allowed in the German or English language. This is, therefore, a de facto ban on Arabic. This measure is not entirely new: in the last two years there have already been such bans imposed on Palestine demonstrations in various cities. In the summer of 2024, at the Palestine camp in front of Berlin’s Reichstag, Hebrew was banned alongside Arabic. What is new is that the Berlin authorities have declared that this ban applies to all gatherings in the German capital “until further notice.”
Palestinians to be deported
On the evening of February 12, two Palestinians from Gaza were arrested and detained in Berlin: the young men were to be deported to Greece the next day. After protests in Berlin, numerous angry calls to the Greek airline that was to carry out the deportation, and legal intervention, the deportation was apparently postponed. With its “asylum compromise” in 1993 (the de facto removal of the basic right to asylum from the German constitution) and the Dublin II Regulation of the European Union in 2003, the Federal Republic of Germany created the legal basis for deporting almost all asylum seekers to “safe third countries.” As an EU member state, Greece is considered a “safe third country,” however Greek camps are notorious for their inhumane living conditions, which is why a suspension of deportation seems realistic.
The two victims are said to come from Khan Younis and to be well-known for their activism against the Gaza genocide. The right-wing Springer press called them “conductors of the Palestinian protests” in Berlin and in its usual racist manner, described them as “clan” members. They are not the first Palestinians to be affected by deportations since October 7, 2023. The German state appears to be using its racist policies not only to divert attention from grievances and to divide the population, but also to get rid of political opponents who are standing up against racism, war, and genocide.
Another “scandal” at the Berlinale
This year’s Berlinale, which took place in Berlin from February 13 to 23, made headlines in the German mainstream media due to alleged “antisemitism scandals.” The Chinese director Jun Li read out a speech by Iranian actor Erfan Shekarriz, in which he said that millions of Palestinians were suffocating under Israel’s brutal settler colonialism. He accused the Federal Republic of Germany of supporting the genocide of the Palestinians. The Scottish actress Tilda Swinton, who was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear for her life’s work, declared her respect for the BDS movement at the press conference. Once again, the German media handled these statements in a scandalous manner, while the Central Council of Jews in Germany ranted about the voicing of “Hamas slogans”.
Preparations for further ban on solidarity group
At the same time, a newspaper article revealed that the German domestic intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz) in the east German state of Saxony is apparently monitoring the Leipzig-based “Handala” solidarity group. Although this group has appeared in the intelligence service’s regional report since 2023, the state of Saxony’s Ministry of Science is now also keeping an eye on it, as some of its members allegedly work at Leipzig University. The domestic intelligence service categorizes Handala’s solidarity work as a form of “secular foreigner extremism,” claiming it’s “particularly opposed to the idea of international understanding” (Völkerverständigung) and shows solidarity with Hamas.
The last two accusations are alarming because last summer, the group “Palestine Solidarity Duisburg” (PDSU) was banned by North Rhine-Westphalia state’s Ministry of the Interior on the basis of exactly the same unfounded allegations. The repressive Saxony authorities thus appear to be preparing for a ban on Handala by first creating a favorable mood in the ministries and the bourgeois media.
No stage for the UN Special Rapporteur
Most recently, two events of the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, in Munich and Berlin were canceled due to political pressure. Albanese was supposed to speak at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich on February 16 and at the Freie Universität (“Free University”) of Berlin on February 18. After the second venue was canceled on short notice, the event was still able to take place in the editorial offices of the left-wing daily newspaper Junge Welt. Though the event was not shut down, as was the Palestine Congress last year, the police followed the example set in Duisburg in December 2023. There, authorities had declared a discussion featuring Zaid Abdulnasser and myself a “closed-door meeting,” surrounded the venue with police cars, and insisted that the state security forces had to attend in order to be able to “intervene.” This is what happened this time in Berlin, too.
Austria: An impending party ban and a “Hamas journalist”
In Germany’s neighboring countries, things are also looking anything but good when it comes to freedom of expression in connection with Palestine.
In Austria, for example, the right-wing FPÖ and the conservative ÖVP are apparently planning to ban the “Gaza List,” which was founded last year and took part in the National Council elections in September 2024. In addition, the British journalist Richard Medhurst was arrested in Vienna at the beginning of February: according to his report, he was summoned by the Austrian immigration authorities, but was confronted on the spot by secret service agents who showed him a search warrant and then drove him to his apartment and confiscated his technological devices. The accusation against the journalist, who has lived in Austria for years, was “membership of Hamas,” or the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. He was threatened with ten years in prison.
Switzerland: Journalist arrested and deported
Ali Abunimah, the journalist and managing director of the internationally renowned online independent news media outlet The Electronic Intifada, was arrested in Switzerland on January 25 and subsequently deported after two nights in custody. Abunimah had been invited to give a lecture. He had already been questioned for an hour by the authorities when he arrived at Zurich airport the day before his arrest. During his detention, he was questioned in the absence of a lawyer and was denied the right to call his family, as he reported after his release. It later became known that the Zurich cantonal police had submitted an application to the Swiss national authorities to ban the journalist from entering the country. However, they had rejected the request. Apparently, massive pressure was then exerted to get the ban passed on the second attempt–this time successfully. According to the Tages-Anzeiger, Mario Fehr was also involved. The right-wing Social Democrat and law-and-order hardliner is a well-known supporter of Israel. He publicly described Abunimah as an “Islamist Jew-hater” and accused him of inciting violence.
France: ban on solidarity group and life imprisonment
French courts dealt the Palestine solidarity movement two blows at once on February 20. First, the ban on the “Collectif Palestine Vaincra,” which was issued in March 2022 and provisionally suspended in April of the same year, has now been upheld. The organization thus meets the same fate as “Samidoun” and Palestine Solidarity Duisburg in Germany, which were banned in November 2023 and May 2024 respectively. Secondly, on February 20, it was decided to postpone the appeal hearing on the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah until June, because France’s “National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office” lodged an objection. The Lebanese communist and pro-Palestinian freedom fighter has been in a French prison for 40 years and was originally due to be released on December 6, 2024.
UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
The logo of the COP29 climate conference appears on the facade of a building under renovation in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku on September 11, 2024. (Photo by TOFIK BABAYEV/AFP via Getty Images)
“Azerbaijan’s international partners should take note and urge the authorities to end the crackdown,” said a major human rights group.
Mere weeks after thousands of delegates descended on Baku, Azerbaijan for the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, authorities in the country arrested multiple independent journalists on charges that one prominent human rights group called “bogus.”
On December 6, police arrested six employees with the independent media organization Meydan TV: Ramin Deko (Jabrailzade), Aynur Elgunesh (Ganbarova), Aysel Umudova, Aytaj Tapdig (Ahmadova), Khayala Agayeva, and Natig Javadli on suspicion of smuggling, according to a statement from Meydan TV. Another media worker, Ulvi Tahirov, was also arrested that day. All seven have been given four months pretrial detention, according to Human Rights Watch.
In a statement released December 6, Meydan TV—which is headquartered in Berlin—said that “since the day we started our activities over a decade ago, our brave journalists have been arrested, and they and their families have been subjected to persecution. Journalists who cooperate with us have been illegally banned from leaving the country, and have been surveilled by Pegasus spyware, among other forms of pressure.” Meydan TV has also called the charges “unfounded” and the detention of its journalists “illegal.”
Since launching in 2013, Meydan TV has become one of the most important sources of independent news in Azerbaijan, broadcasting interviews with opposition politicians and publishing investigative reporting, according to the Eurasianet, an outlet that covers South Caucasus and Central Asia.
As part of its coverage of COP29, Meydan TV addressed the scrutiny that the Azerbaijani government has engendered for its human rights record.
Members of the Azerbaijani media were also arrested last year. Reporters with Abzas Media, Toplum TV, and Kanal 13 were arrested in 2023 and remain in pretrial custody, and like those targeted in this most recent wave of arrests they face smuggling charges, according to Human Rights Watch.
“Having created a network of laws and regulations in Azerbaijan designed to make it virtually impossible for journalists and activists carrying out legitimate work in full compliance, the government then invokes such bogus charges as politically convenient to silence critics,” wrote Arzu Geybulla, a research assistant with Human Rights Watch.
Geybulla added: “Azerbaijan’s international partners should take note and urge the authorities to end the crackdown, including releasing all those arbitrarily detailed, and dropping all politically motivated prosecutions.”
Another rights group, Reporters Without Borders, urged the Azerbaijani government to release these journalists, as well as others that have been “arbitrarily detained.”
Jeanne Cavelier, head of Reporters Without Borders’ Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, said that “barely a month after Ilham Aliyev’s regime used the glitz of COP29 to polish its international image, it has resumed its relentless repression of journalists.”
Zarah Sultana speaking after a march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, from Russell Square to Whitehall in central London, June 21, 2025
