\n<\/p>\n
A<\/span>t 81, Deborah Hinton, a former British magistrate who was honoured by the late Queen Elizabeth II for services to the community, seems an unlikely terrorist suspect. In the quiet town in south-west England where she lives, much of her retirement is spent walking along the cliffs, raising funds for the nearby cathedral choir, and supporting local charities.<\/p>\n But last month she was detained in a police cell for seven hours, fingerprinted and had a DNA swab taken from her mouth. It was the first time she had ever been arrested, and the experience left her \u201cin a state of trauma\u201d and \u201cshaking uncontrollably\u201d. She could face a jail sentence of six months under UK terrorism legislation.<\/p>\n Hinton is among more than 200 Britons who have been arrested in recent months for peacefully protesting about the war in Gaza and the designation by the British government of an activist group, Palestine Action, as a terrorist organisation. They say the ban is a draconian clampdown on freedom of expression, and runs counter to a proud tradition of protest and civil disobedience in the UK that includes the suffragettes\u2019 campaign a century ago for women\u2019s right to vote and marches against nuclear weapons in the 1950s.<\/p>\n <\/span>Jon Farley was arrested while holding a cartoon from a satirical magazine. <\/span> Photograph: Christopher Thomond\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Those detained by police in recent months include Jon Farley, a retired school principal who was silently holding a cartoon from a satirical magazine; Marianne Sorrell, another former teacher now aged 80, who was held by police for almost 27 hours and had her home searched; and the Rev Sue Parfitt, an 83-year-old retired priest, who was arrested while sitting in a camping chair outside the British parliament in London holding a sign stating her support for Palestine Action.<\/p>\n They have become symbols of a growing defiance of the British state\u2019s decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, putting it on a par with Islamic State and al-Qaida. Anyone supporting the group, raising funds for it, \u201cglorifying its activities\u201d or sharing its social media posts is committing a criminal offence. Membership of, or inviting support for Palestine Action, carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.<\/p>\n Parliament approved the designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation last month after a series of events. Last summer, activists from the group allegedly targeted Horizon, a British subsidiary of the Israeli defence company Elbit Systems. Five people appeared in court in July, charged with aggravated burglary, criminal damage and violent disorder. The UK\u2019s public prosecution agency argued that \u201cthese offences have a terrorist connection\u201d.<\/p>\n In March this year, Palestine Action supporters allegedly vandalised a golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland, owned by Donald Trump, by painting pro-Palestinian messages and digging up part of the course. On his social media channel, the US president referred to the perpetrators as \u201cterrorists\u201d, adding \u201chopefully [they] will be treated harshly\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>Supporters of Palestine demonstrate outside London\u2019s high court in July.<\/span> Photograph: Carlos Jasso\/Reuters<\/p>\n The situation came to a head in June, when activists from the group allegedly caused \u00a37m ($9.5m) of damage to two Royal Air Force planes at a UK military base, using red paint and crowbars, in a major security breach. Palestine Action later released video footage of the action and said the UK was \u201can active participant in the Gaza genocide and war crimes across the Middle East\u201d.<\/p>\n Yvette Cooper, the senior government minister in charge of national security, argued that the group\u2019s actions had put the country\u2019s security at risk, and that the \u201cserious damage\u201d it had caused to property meant it met the legal definition of terrorism.<\/p>\n There has been resistance to the move, however \u2013 a defiance that will be vividly displayed on Saturday when at least 500 people are expected to join a \u201clift the ban\u201d protest in Westminster, the heart of the British political establishment, at which they will silently hold placards proclaiming: \u201cI oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.\u201d London\u2019s Metropolitan police, the UK\u2019s biggest force, has said anyone showing support for the group \u201ccan expect to be arrested\u201d.<\/p>\n The protest will take place as public opinion in Britain, as elsewhere, on the war in Gaza has significantly shifted over recent months amid horror and revulsion at images of starving Palestinian children and reports of adults and youngsters being shot or blown up as they desperately try to secure food and drinkable water for themselves and their families.<\/p>\n \u201cHow has the government got itself into this mess \u2026 over people peacefully expressing their opinions?\u201d said Tim Crosland, a former UK government lawyer turned activist and a co-founder of Defend Our Juries, which has organised Saturday\u2019s protest. The event would see \u201cBritain\u2019s backbone on display\u201d, he said at a press conference on Wednesday.<\/p>\n <\/span>Palestine Action supporters are accused of vandalising a golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland, owned by Donald Trump.<\/span> Photograph: palestineaction.org<\/p>\n Cooper was at pains this week to say that proscription was decided based on strong security advice. \u201cIt also follows disturbing information referencing planning for further attacks, the details of which cannot yet be publicly reported due to ongoing legal proceedings,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThose who seek to support this group may yet not know the true nature of the organisation. But people should be under no illusion \u2013 this is not a peaceful or non-violent protest group.\u201d<\/p>\n She added that the ban \u201conly applies to the specific and narrow organisation, Palestine Action\u201d and did not affect the freedom to protest about Palestinian rights.<\/p>\n Even so, it has become a flashpoint, with the prohibition of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation criticised by the UN\u2019s human rights chief, Volker T\u00fcrk, who said it was at odds with international human rights law; Amnesty International; more than 300 prominent Jews in the UK, who described it as \u201cillegitimate and unethical\u201d; and dozens of global scholars including Naomi Klein and Angela Davis who applauded a \u201cgrowing campaign of collective defiance\u201d against the ban.<\/p>\n Palestine Action has sought to overturn the ban in the UK courts, and a challenge will be heard in November. The group will be represented by Gareth Pierce, a veteran human rights lawyer with a record of repeatedly taking on the British state \u2013 and often winning \u2013 over a career spanning more than half a century.<\/p>\n The group\u2019s supporters have said that, according to their legal advice, if the ban is overturned, those detained by the police will be able to sue for wrongful arrest. The 200-plus arrested so far are likely to be joined by hundreds more during this weekend\u2019s protest.<\/p>\n The organisers of the protest have been accused of \u201cplotting\u201d to overwhelm the police and court system. A spokesperson for the Metropolitan police said: \u201cWe are aware that the organisers of Saturday\u2019s planned protest are encouraging hundreds of people to turn out with the intention of placing a strain on the police and the wider criminal justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n Palestine Action\u2019s supporters deny the claim but acknowledge that \u201cit will be a challenge to arrest more than 500 people given that we think there are about 520 available police cells in London at any one time\u201d.<\/p>\n One of those planning to take part is Alice Clack, a senior obstetrician and gynaecologist in the National Health Service, and a volunteer with Doctors Without Borders and climate activist. She was arrested in July for holding a sign supporting Palestine Action outside parliament and may face prosecution under anti-terrorism laws.<\/p>\n This week, she said her grandfather\u2019s experience of being brought as a child refugee to England from Nazi Europe on the Kindertransport \u201ctaught me the necessity of standing up against injustice\u201d. The labelling of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation was a \u201cgross abuse of state power\u201d, she added.<\/p>\n Only 10 of the 221 people \u2013 many of them senior citizens \u2013 that have been detained by police in the past five weeks have been charged with any offence, according to a statement from counter-terrorism police. Several decades after she stepped down as a magistrate, Hinton has been left not knowing whether she will return to court, this time to sit in the dock instead of on the bench.<\/p>\n But her mood of defiance is undimmed. \u201cThe rights to demonstrate and other rights are being eroded systematically by the government,\u201d she told the Observer. \u201cWe are on a slippery slope to all demonstrations being banned.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At 81, Deborah Hinton, a former British magistrate who was honoured by the late Queen Elizabeth II for services to the community, seems an unlikely terrorist suspect. In the quiet town in south-west England where she lives, much of her retirement is spent walking along the cliffs, raising funds for the nearby cathedral choir, and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[682,163,8408,8407,1936,5579,1240,1664,560,199],"class_list":{"0":"post-14810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-abuse","9":"tag-ban","10":"tag-defiance","11":"tag-gross","12":"tag-group","13":"tag-grows","14":"tag-palestine","15":"tag-power","16":"tag-protest","17":"tag-state"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}