Activism

The Westminster government has announced that it intends to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.  In a statement to the House of Commons, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said that Palestine Action had a “long history of unacceptable criminal damage”. She added that the government would not tolerate those who put the UK’s defence enterprise at risk. That was a reference to an incident which involved the group breaking into RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, spray-painting two military planes red – an incident that Cooper called “disgraceful”. The proscription of the group is a significant escalation and has kicked off a major debate about civil liberties – if approved, it will be the first time a direct action group of this sort would be proscribed alongside organisations like ISIS and al-Qaeda. The group, which targets Israeli weapons facilities through property damage and disruption rather than violence against people, would see […]

TRT World’s exclusive documentary reveals how Prevent harms children, through first-ever interviews with a parent and teacher whose lives were deeply impacted by false Prevent referrals. TRT interviews Prevent Watch‘s Dr Layla Aitlhadj, and the author Prof. John Holmwood, an expert witness during the Trojan Horse scandal that saw Prevent forced into schools, and co-author of The People’s Review of Prevent. The 13-minute documentary is well worth watching to understand how Prevent’s presence across the public services in the UK relies upon and deepens stereotypes regarding Muslims in the UK. Meanwhile, the UN has recently called on the UK government to suspend Prevent and compensate its victims. Watch the documentary on YouTube. Related… TRT: UN rapporteur speaks of ‘chilling effect’ of Prevent strategy in the UK (News, 2023)

The United Kingdom has a long history of targeting Sikh activists, which has intensified in the last few years under creative state-sanctioned methods of surveillance and criminalisation, writes Shamsher Singh for Baaz News.

A coalition of leading civil society organisations has urged the UK Labour government to overhaul counter-extremism policies including the controversial Prevent programme, Middle East Eye can exclusively report.