Photo: Solidarity with Palestine Action. Mexico City, Mexico, August 2025. Photo by ProtoplasmaKid.
Our colleagues at Peace Brigades International-United Kingdom (PBI-UK) have posted on social media:
“UN Human Rights Chief: UK ban of Palestine Action a ‘disturbing misuse of counter-terrorism legislation’ and ‘an impermissible restriction’ on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly & association. The decision should be rescinded.”
At that time, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk stated: “I urge the UK Government to rescind its decision to proscribe Palestine Action and to halt investigations and further proceedings against protesters who have been arrested on the basis of this proscription. I also call on the UK Government to review and revise its counter-terrorism legislation, including its definition of terrorist acts, to bring it fully in line with international human rights norms and standards.”
Since the UK government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist group on July 5, 2025, British police have arrested at least 2,489 individuals for showing support to Palestine Action. This included for simply holding a cardboard sign that says: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
High Court ruling
The Toronto Star now reports: “Britain’s High Court ruled Friday [February 13] that the government’s decision to outlaw the protest group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization was unlawful, but it kept the ban in place pending another hearing while the government prepares an appeal.”
The article adds: “[The justices] gave lawyers for the two sides until Feb. 20 to prepare for that hearing.”
The Guardian further reports: “The Metropolitan police has released a statement after the high court’s ruling this morning, warning that the proscription remains in place and so showing support for Palestine Action is still a criminal offence.”
Shrinking space in Europe
The Brussels-based Solidar has noted in relation to Palestinian solidarity protests in the European Union (EU): “In at least 12 EU member states, authorities have taken disproportionate measures, including the pre-emptive banning of protests based on apparent risk to ‘public order’ and ‘security’.”
This European network of civil society organizations notes disproportionate measures by authorities to quell protests in Italy and Germany, and incidents of excessive force in Belgium, France and the Netherlands.
In Canada
In December 2024, Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) stated: “Across Canada and internationally, we are seeing a marked rise in violent repression of the Palestine solidarity movement. Independent Jewish Voices condemns the mounting criminalization of Palestine solidarity activism, and the use of excessive force by police to intimidate and harass activists.”
In March 2025, the BCCLA also stated: “Over the past 16 months we have witnessed a widespread pattern of professional discipline, loss of educational and training opportunities, censure, harassment, and the criminalization of individuals who have exercised their right to free political expression in calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide and demanding those actions cease. Such heavy-handed responses cast a chilling shadow over civil liberties and advocacy for Palestinian human rights across Canada.”
And in April 2025, Toronto Metropolitan University professor Shiri Pasternak and University of Windsor law professors Jillian Rogin and Joshua Sealy-Harrington wrote in The Breach: “As Palestinian solidarity organizers face dramatic arrests and deportations in a sweeping crackdown on dissent in the United States, some Canadian lawyers are taking notes. …Lawfare is being deployed to control the narrative about Israel’s genocide in Gaza—branding as “antisemitic” criticism of Israel, support for international law, or even reference to Palestinian rights, speech, and culture.”
Bill C-9
In October 2025, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) posted: “The federal government recently introduced Bill C-9 – An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places) – with the declared intent to make Canadians safer. Instead, this legislative proposal creates new criminal laws that risk serious and unjustified infringements on Charter-protected fundamental freedoms, including the criminalization of peaceful protest.”
In mid-December 2025, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) commented: “The version of the Bill being debated in the House of Commons has the potential to infringe on our hard fought-for rights of freedom of expression and freedom of association with little to no oversight. Parliament should not pass this Bill without considerable amendment. As drafted, the Bill threatens labour rights, fundamental freedoms, the right to protest, and public accountability.”
Palestinian human rights defenders
We are following these issues from the perspective that the protests that uphold the role of the International Criminal Court, the rulings of the International Court of Justice, adherence to the Arms Trade Treaty and Genocide Convention, and support the overall the architecture of international law, are ultimately about protecting civilian life and the lives of human rights defenders who are at further risk without these protections.
The Dublin-based organization Front Line Defenders (the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders) has documented the killing of 31 Palestinian human rights defenders in 2023 and 2024.
The organization, founded in 2001 to protect human rights defenders, says the numbers are undoubtedly higher. They note: “In some regions and countries, including Palestine, the documentation of cases is highly challenging, if not virtually impossible.” They clearly state, however, that “those defending the right to health and the right to life as doctors, nurses, or ambulance workers, those exposing and documenting war crimes as journalists, and those providing humanitarian support as volunteers or employees of aid agencies were all specifically targeted by Israeli bombs or guns.”
Global Witness has also commented: “Documenting killings and disappearances of land and environmental defenders within these contexts [of conflict and violence in occupied territories] is challenging and has not been possible for 2024. To do so in the future, it is vital to situate the work of Palestinian defenders within the wider struggle for self-determination and their land and environmental rights.”
We continue to follow this.
Additional reading
-Peace Brigades International statement on genocide in Gaza: PBI calls for respect for international law, protection of human rights defenders and an immediate cease-fire (February 28, 2024).
– Arrest of Palestinian solidarity activists in Ottawa raises concerns about repression of protests against weapons companies (PBI-Canada, November 21, 2024).
