17The expanding "terrorist" label: Palestine Action proscription and mass protest arrests; journalists and medics branded militants
- Pensioners arrested under terrorism law for cardboard signs.
- 2,000+ arrests; the UN human rights chief called the ban a “disturbing” misuse of counter-terror law.
- One court found the ban unlawful; a higher court restored it; the arrests never stopped.
The UK proscribed the protest group Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act in July 2025 — making support punishable by up to 14 years in prison — and police have since arrested more than 2,000 people, many of them elderly, for holding signs supporting the group, a ban UN human rights chief Volker Türk called a "disturbing" misuse of counter-terrorism legislation and Amnesty International UK called disproportionate legal overreach. Rights groups paired this with Israel's practice of labeling journalists and medics it killed or detained as terrorists: the Committee to Protect Journalists said Israel produced no credible evidence for its claim that Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, killed in a targeted August 2025 strike, was a Hamas operative — a pattern also applied to detained Kamal Adwan hospital director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. The ban was challenged by judicial review brought by Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori: the Divisional Court held the proscription unlawful on 13 February 2026, but the Court of Appeal allowed the Home Secretary's appeal that June, leaving the proscription in force pending any further appeal.
The record — 16 sources
Date, publication and headline for each source, as the source itself published them. Sorted by publication date. 14 of 16 dated; a blank means the publisher's page didn't expose it, and we don't guess.