Yesterday marked one of the most shameful days in the history of the Metropolitan Police as they arrested peaceful protesters including a blind man in a wheelchair, an 81-year-old woman with Parkinson’s, a former British army officer, and a bunch of, um, Quakers. All of them were protesting against two things: the UK’s ongoing participation in the Gaza genocide and the proscription of Palestine Action. All of them were arrested under the Terrorism Act.
Imagine being the police officer whose job it was to wheel this man away. You can see the shame in his face as he lowers his head. These officers must know history is not going to judge them kindly, but they must also know just following orders is not okay. If I was a police officer, I would not have made those arrests, even if it cost me my job. Doing the right thing is infinitely more important than just following orders.
Yesterday police made twice the number of counter-terrorism arrests than they did in all of 2023 and one-fifth of those arrested were over 70. One police officer was wearing a hat that suggested he came from a Welsh police force. Remember this when police say they can’t send any officers out after you’ve been burgled. Police are dealing with the real criminals now, and the real criminals include quakers. Yes, quakers were arrested.
Zionists are more important than your civil rights.
nah. racist anti immigrant right wing reform voters will never be considered terrorists according to kieth
Race riots are just a bit of harmless fun, protesting genocide with blank paper is terrorism
The proscription of Palestine Action is ridiculous and shameful.
But so is this article. If you turned up in support of ISIS then you should be arrested whether you’re old or young, blind, deaf, in a wheelchair, doing cartwheels, or anything else. Disabled people are capable of supporting terrorist organisations and to pretend this is absurd is to miss the point and cynically look for sympathy where it won’t be found. Not only that, but being arrested for supporting a terrorist organisation doesn’t mean you’re “considered a terrorist.”
Criticise the actual problem - that the Terrorism Act gave the Secretary of State authoritarian powers that it never should have, and she has now used those powers to ban a group that protested a genocidal war through non-violent direct action.
Hot to make sure that the Israeli jew does his genocide in peace. God forbid they find out that nobody appreciates them or their crimes.
UK sounds like a shitter america but with decent health care
The propaganda framing from the BBC on the arrests has been truly ludicrous. They described the protesters attempts to “evade detection” by bringing blank pieces of paper along, explaining they would only write messages on the cards if more than 500 people turned up.
“Our correspondent… has been telling me how protesters carefully planned to evade police detection while carrying placards as part of their protest,” the newsreader explained as though she was describing the most sinister plot ever uncovered.
What is non-factual or poorly framed about that?
Protestors didn’t want to get arrested without achieving critical mass, so to prevent being arrested before that point, they only wrote their signs after doing so.
It sounds like you want the BBC to be a mouthpiece for your views and interpret anything less than that as propaganda. If I can listen to a BBC report about it and come away a) with renewed disgust at the ban and b) understanding the tactics used by the protestors, what have they done wrong?
Remember when liberals were outraged when Russian protesters were arrested for showing blank pieces of paper?
The UK is now in the same stage of slide toward autocracy, evidently.
But they weren’t arrested for showing blank pieces of paper. They were arrested after they wrote things on them.
What is it with liberals literally only seeing bug problems when it’s in other countries.
Paper! Believe it or not, jail.
Next they’re going to be arresting a deaf-blind quadruple amputee and charging them with terrorism offences. It proves the complete absurdity of the PA ban and the total abuse of terrorism law by the government.
From a different website:
Parliament in early July passed a law banning Palestine Action and making it a crime to publicly support the organization. That came after activists broke into a Royal Air Force base and vandalized two tanker planes to protest Britain’s support for Israel’s offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/uk-london-protest-pro-palestinian-law-action-1.7605253
extra funny given he previously cheered on this type of protest during the Iraq bullshit
They must be Quakering in their boots
