Four arrests outside Parliament as Palestine Action protests against its ban
The protest took place outside of Parliament as MPs gave their approval to the Government's decision to ban Palestine Action as a terror group.
The Commons voted 385 to 26, majority 359, in favour of proscribing the group under the Terrorism Act 2000.
The move, which also has to be considered by the House of Lords, would make it a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison to be a member of the direct action group or to support it.
Outside of Parliament, the police imposed Public Order Act conditions aimed at limiting the protest to an area off Whitehall.
'Public Order Act conditions had been imposed to prevent serious disruption, requiring anyone taking part in the protest to assemble on Richmond Terrace, off Whitehall,' a spokesperson for the force said.
One woman, who identified herself as Emma Kamio to the PA news agency, appeared to use the protest technique known as 'locking on' to cause an obstruction outside of Carriage Gates, one of the entrances to the parliamentary estate.
Her daughter Leona Kamio was among a group of pro-Palestine protesters who have appeared in court to deny breaking into the UK site of an Israel-based defence firm with sledgehammers, causing £1 million of damage.
Police were seen speaking to Ms Kamio as she sat on the pavement outside Parliament with her arm inside what appeared to be a suitcase.
Listing the four arrests, a Met spokesperson said a woman 'who locked herself onto a suitcase outside the gates of Parliament' was among them for 'breaching the conditions and for being in possession of articles intended for locking on'.
'A man who was with her and refused to move to the conditioned area was arrested for breaching the conditions,' they added.
The spokesman also said: 'A man who blocked the gates of Downing Street with his mobility scooter and refused to move to the conditioned area was arrested for breaching the conditions.'
A fourth man was arrested for 'breaching conditions' of the demonstration, according to the Met.
A larger than usual number of officers could be seen in the area around Parliament.
The Met said the 'significant policing presence in the vicinity of Parliament' was because of its 'responsibility to take action to prevent serious disruption to the life of the community', including by ensuring MPs 'can go about their business free from intimidation or unreasonable interference'.
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The Independent
42 minutes ago
- The Independent
MPs vote to support proscribing Palestine Action as terror group
MPs have backed the government's move to ban the direct action group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, despite warnings that this would have a 'chilling effect' on protest. Legislation passed in the Commons yesterday, as MPs voted 385 to 26, a majority of 359 in favour of proscribing the group under the Terrorism Act 2000. While security minister Dan Jarvis told MPs that Palestine Action as not a 'legitimate protest group', others criticised the move and described it as 'draconian overreach' and likened the group to the Suffragettes. Zarah Sultana, the independent MP for Coventry South, told the Commons: 'To equate a spray can of paint with a suicide bomb isn't just absurd, it is grotesque. It is a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity and suppress the truth.' The motion is expected to be debated and voted on by the House of Lords today before it becomes law. Meanwhile, pro- Palestine demonstrators have hit out at the government, accusing it of 'hypocrisy' as it prepares to ban an activist group under anti-terror law. The decision to proscribe the group comes after two planes were vandalised at RAF Brize Norton on June 20. Speaking to The Independent while demonstrating outside parliament, David Collins, a retired veteran with no links to Palestine Action and who served with the Marines for nine years, said: 'In comparison to some of the atrocities that this government is approving – and sending arms to Israel – amongst some people that is justified action. They are warplanes that can be repaired. There was nobody hurt. I would say that is a legitimate form of protest.' Jonathan Fluxman, 69, a retired doctor who was also demonstrating on Wednesday, said a ban was 'utterly ridiculous'. 'Palestine action are a direct action group. They are avowedly non-violent and I think this is much more about them embarrassing the British government by being incredibly effective in terms of interrupting the flow of weapons from Britain to Israel to try and stop the awful, awful genocide', he said. Four people, including 'a man who blocked the gates of Downing Street with his mobility scooter', were arrested following the protest in Westminster, the Metropolitan Police has said. On Tuesday, two more arrests were made after Palestine Action claimed to have blockaded the entrance of an Israeli defence company's UK headquarters. A spokesperson for the group said activists had blocked the entrance to Elbit Systems in Bristol and covered it in red paint 'to symbolise Palestinian bloodshed'. Kat, another protester demonstrating outside parliament on Wednesday morning, accused the government of a 'complete clampdown on our right to protest'. She said: 'There are many groups that use the same tactics and have used the same tactics in the past and they've never had this extreme a response to it. I think they're shutting it down because its effective. It is making an impact on the profits of Elbit Systems who is Israel's largest weapons manufacturer.' But home secretary Yvette Cooper said 'violence and serious criminal damage has no place in legitimate protest. The right to protest and the right to free speech are the cornerstone of our democracy and there are countless campaign groups that freely exercise those rights.' The prime minister, Keir Starmer, said the action at RAF Brize Norton was 'disgraceful' and an 'act of vandalism'. While the government is rushing through parliament absurd legislation to proscribe Palestine Action, the real terrorism is being committed in Gaza Palestine Action The shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, also condemned the group, saying: 'This attack on Britain's military is totally unjustified. They are undermining the very organisation that protects us all. Palestine Action should be pursued, prosecuted and banned for what they have done. In this country we settle disagreements through debate and democracy, not through acts of vandalism and violence.' A spokesperson for Palestine Action said: 'While the government is rushing through parliament absurd legislation to proscribe Palestine Action, the real terrorism is being committed in Gaza. Palestine Action affirms that direct action is necessary in the face of Israel's ongoing crimes against humanity of genocide, apartheid and occupation, and to end British facilitation of those crimes.' Opening the debate in the Commons on Wednesday, security minister Dan Jarvis said proscription of the group would 'reaffirm the UK's zero tolerance approach to terrorism, regardless of its form or underlying ideology'. 'Proscription is rightly ideologically neutral. It judges an organisation on its actions and the actions it is willing to deploy in pursuit of its cause', he said, adding that proscription was 'one of the most powerful counter-terrorism tools available to government. Any decision to proscribe is taken with great care and following rigorous consideration.' Unveiling the intention to ban the group following the incident on June 23, Cooper said it was the latest in a 'long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action'. The group, which intends to bring a legal challenge against the government, has staged a series of demonstrations in recent months, including spraying the London offices of Allianz Insurance with red paint over its alleged links to Elbit, and vandalising Donald Trump's Turnberry golf course in South Ayrshire. Palestine Action's website says it uses disruptive tactics to target 'corporate enablers of the Israeli military-industrial complex' and seeks to make it 'impossible for these companies to profit from the oppression of Palestinians'. Some 81 organisations have been proscribed under the 2000 Act, including Islamist groups such as Hamas and al-Qaeda, far-right groups such as National Action, and the Russian private military company the Wagner Group. The draft order laid on Monday also lists neo-Nazi group Maniacs Murder Cult and far-right nationalist group Russian Imperial Movement, including its paramilitary arm, Russian Imperial Legion, to be proscribed in the UK. Belonging to or expressing support for a proscribed organisation, along with a number of other actions, are criminal offences carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
The National
an hour ago
- The National
In a dangerous era journalism needs to show some backbone again
Having spent almost my entire working life in journalism, it's almost a given then that at some point during a break, I reflect on the nature of the job and profession that has engaged me for the best part of 40 years. Two things added to that sense of questioning journalism's meaning during my brief time off. The first was my choice of holiday reading, a memoir of Graydon Carter the one-time editor of Vanity Fair magazine aptly titled When The Going Was Good, and the other was the death earlier this week of the great foreign correspondent, author and ITN news presenter Sandy Gall, with whom a certain generation of readers will no doubt be familiar. READ MORE: The 26 MPs who voted against proscribing Palestine Action It was Gall himself who in great part inspired my own initial reporting sorties in Afghanistan back in the early 80s when I first met him and before the country and its travails became a near obsession for the both of us. Both Carter and Gall were journalists of what some might call the 'golden age' of reporting in the 60s, 70s and 80s. It was a time when budgets were high, as were the expectations of readers and viewers of the journalists they depended on to cover and explain the great stories of the time. Journalism back then seemed to have a clear sense of purpose in holding power to account with a laser-like probing power. No story was too far away. No person was exempt from scrutiny should they cross the line of acceptable political behaviour. Be it Watergate or war reporting, the journalists' beat knew few limits. It was a time too before 'fake news', a time also before journalists became targets – literally – for doing their job, or so it seems when looking back. The reality of course is slightly different, for such threats have in fact always posed a challenge to the media going about their work, just perhaps not to the extent they do now. Which brings me to the dire state of so much of today's journalism, for what a contrast there is between those times when Carter and Gall were in their heyday compared to the media landscape of today. For barring a few brave and notable exceptions, so much of our media landscape now seems inhabited by quislings and cowards. With hand on heart, I can say I've never at one and the same time been so ashamed and also so proud of some of my media colleagues. No story epitomises this right now more than events in Gaza and the Middle East. On the one side we have journalists seemingly paralysed by fear of asking the questions that need to be asked of our politicians and on the other, the resounding bravery of our Palestinian colleagues who pursue their reporting with a courage the like of which has rarely been matched by the global media in modern times. In such a climate, the likes of the BBC hides behind words like 'the perception of partiality,' in justifying its decision not to air the documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, leaving it to Channel 4 to pick up. But leaving Gaza aside, there is a much deeper malaise in journalism right now. Some of it is a result of the media's own making. Lack of investment, a dearth of imagination whereby the easy option rather than the 'difficult-to-tell-story' is the order of the day. Then there are the shortcomings too when it comes to maximising the potential use of new formats and platforms. Producing quality and in some cases great journalism, as the days of Carter, Gall and their generation showed, was never cheap, and the age-old maxim that you pay for what you get is something the industry singularly fails to recognise today. But putting these internal inadequacies aside for a moment, there is another far more potent force undermining today's journalism. I'm speaking of course about the way prominent politicians the world over are directly attacking 'troublesome' journalists with threats, lawsuits, or worse. As Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, a senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, pointed out last year, many of these politicians are pressuring media companies to remove their work. 'They belittle and vilify individual reporters when it suits them, often singling out women and minorities. They encourage their supporters to distrust the news and sometimes incite them to attack journalists,' Nielsen rightly observed. Across the world – everywhere you look right now – a growing number of governments and political authorities are not fulfilling their role as guarantors of the best possible environment for journalism. Intimidation and censorship are today almost at unprecedented levels. Any thinking person too will recognise that at their worst, political threats to journalism are often part of wider, systematic, sustained efforts to weaken, undermine, or even dismantle the formal and informal institutions of democracy. As outright political hostility to journalism grows, so the media needs allies and support from other quarters. As Professor Nielsen says, this effectively means the public that the media aim and claim to serve. 'At its best journalism has much to offer the public,' Nielen attests, and he's right. That much was evident back 'when the going was good', in those days that Graydon Carter refers to and when journalism served the public. For that to happen again today two things especially are needed amongst others. The first is that public support must again be won over to deter political attacks and at least help build resilience to resist attempts to undermine independent news media. The second is that journalism today has to find and show some spine again. In a dangerous era for the media, it must stop playing the role of political quisling. Instead, it should again aspire to be brave, dogged, resolute, and not shirk from calling out those deserving of it.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘I was constantly scared of what she was going to do': the troubled life and shocking death of Immy Nunn
Just a few hours before she ended her life, Immy Nunn seemed happy. She and her mother, Louise, had been shopping and had lunch. It was the final day of 2022 and Immy, who was 25, appeared positive about the new year. She talked about taking her driving test and looking for a new flat. She was excited about the opportunities her profile on TikTok was bringing her; known as Deaf Immy, she had nearly 800,000 followers, attracted by her honest and often funny videos about her deafness and her mental health. By the early hours of the next morning, Immy was dead, having taken poison she bought online, almost certainly after discovering it through an online pro-suicide forum. On a sunny day, kitchen doors open to the garden, Louise sits at her table; every so often she glances at the photographs of her daughter. Immy's assistance dog, Whitney, now lives with her parents, and wanders around, stopping occasionally to be stroked. Louise describes these last couple of years as: 'Hell. Horrible.' The pain of losing her child, she says, 'you wouldn't wish on anyone'. She copes, she says, 'day by day. I struggle with a lot of things. I don't like doing a lot.' For the previous 10 years, Louise had been on high alert, always terrified something would happen to her daughter. Since she was about 14, Immy had periods of severe mental illness. She had self-harmed, and attempted suicide many times, and for four years she had been an inpatient at a psychiatric hospital. She had spent the Christmas of 2022 at her parents' home in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, then gone back to her flat in Brighton. On 29 December, she had cut herself and gone to hospital – as far as her family knew, it was the first time she had self-harmed in ages. Immy's dad, Ray, went straight to see her and tried to get her to come home with him, but she told him she wanted to stay, and that she had an appointment with one of her support workers the following day. On 31 December, Louise and Ray went to spend the day with her in Brighton. They returned to Bognor Regis with Whitney because Immy was going to a New Year's Eve party at a friend's house in nearby Shoreham-by-Sea. Louise was woken about 5am by the mother of Immy's friend calling to say Immy had left unexpectedly, and without her coat and shoes. They had known Immy since she was a child, and were aware of her mental health problems. Louise phoned the police straight away and kept trying to ring Immy; Ray went out to look for their daughter, eventually driving to her flat in Brighton. When he arrived, the police and an ambulance were already there. Immy's devastated family is one of several that appear in a two-part Channel 4 documentary, Poisoned: Killer in the Post. It is based on an investigation by the Times journalist James Beal, which started after he was contacted by David Parfett, whose son Tom also died after taking a substance he bought online. The documentary shows the impact on vulnerable people of a pro-suicide forum where methods were discussed, including signposting to a Canadian chef, Kenneth Law, who Canadian police believe shipped about 1,200 packages of poison around the world. In the UK, the National Crime Agency has identified 97 potential victims. Law is awaiting trial in Canada, charged with 14 counts of murder – the dead were in the Ontario area and between the ages of 16 and 36 – but is pleading not guilty. About five months after Immy's death, the police told Louise and Ray that they had been given a list of names of British people linked to Law, and Immy was on it. They were doing checks, Louise says the police told her, to see who on the list was still alive. Louise would like to see Law extradited to the UK, though she knows this is unlikely. For a decade, she and her family went through heartbreaking effort to try to keep Immy safe. 'And then it's someone online. You fear the man on the corner, don't you, but not the man you can't see?' And she would like to see more regulation of sites that can be harmful to vulnerable people. 'The [government] are allowing them; no one's stopping them from doing it.' The site Immy is believed to have accessed is now under investigation by Ofcom; as of 1 July, the site was no longer accessible to people in the UK. A journalist had showed Louise the site, and she was shocked at how accessible it was. 'It wasn't even on the dark web,' she says. 'I was just shocked that something like that is just there. How is it even allowed?' Vulnerable people who are struggling understandably might want to find others who are feeling the same, but the site encourages and facilitates suicide – methods are discussed and tips swapped, and the 'goodbye' posts are met with congratulatory messages. As for Law, Louise says: 'I hate him. Hate the sound of his name, hate seeing his face.' Immy was always a fighter, Louise says. She had been born six weeks early and spent her first couple of weeks in hospital. The fourth of her five children, Immy had siblings who doted on her. 'She was just beautiful,' Louise says of Immy as a baby. 'She was so good and happy; everything about her was just perfect.' The family found out that Immy was profoundly deaf when she was 18 months old, though Louise suspected it already (one of her older children also has hearing loss, though not to the extent Immy did). Having a child with additional needs meant they spent a lot of time together. When Immy was three, she had cochlear implants, which involved trips to Great Ormond Street hospital in London every few weeks. She was happy at school, Louise remembers. It was a mainstream school but with a unit for the several deaf children there at the time. Then, when Immy was about 13, Louise noticed a change in her. Some of her deaf friends had left, and Immy stopped seeing other friends. 'You just thought: 'Typical teenager', until one day I saw cuts on her legs and I realised that there was something going on,' says Louise. She had been running away from school, and was clearly unhappy there. She had an appointment with the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services but refused to go, then took her first overdose shortly before she turned 15. 'I thought she was dead at that point,' says Louise. 'Reality hits – this is really serious.' The National Deaf Children's Society helped Louise advocate for Immy at school, and find her a place at a leading school for deaf children, but it took a while, and Immy's mental health was deteriorating. After school one day, Louise could hear her in the bathroom and became worried about what she was doing, but couldn't get her to come out. Immy's older sister went in and found she had cut her arm badly. 'I just remember her face and her saying, 'Mum, you need to get her to hospital straight away.' I was constantly scared of what she was going to do.' There were other suicide attempts. Ray is a roofer and Louise had worked part-time in a shop, around looking after the children, but she gave that up to be there for Immy. 'If she was at home, you wouldn't leave her for second,' she says. Immy was in and out of children's mental health units and then got a place in a unit for deaf children in London. 'We would go up two, three times a week to visit and she was doing really well, but she could only stay there until she was 18,' says Louise. Once Immy was discharged, Louise says there was no follow-up care and she was instead put on unfamiliar medication, which she had a terrible reaction to. 'We ended up right back where we were. She was in her room smashing things over her head, blood everywhere.' The following year, Immy was back in psychiatric hospital, where she would be for the next four years. The family hoped it would be the start of Immy getting better, but it was also, says Louise, 'four years of hell. We just didn't know when you were going to get a phone call.' On the weekends she was allowed home, Louise would sleep in her room with her 'because I was so scared of what she'd get up and do'. Immy had been diagnosed with emotionally unstable personality disorder, PTSD and other conditions including depression and anxiety. There were periods when she was well and she seemed happy; she had a girlfriend for a while. 'She'd have really good days; you'd be able to go on holiday and have fun times. But you just never knew when her mind was going to suddenly hurt herself, and she didn't know. That was the scary thing. She'd just dissociate.' Starting a TikTok account in 2020 helped her, Louise says. 'It took her mind off things. Obviously, she was still really poorly. She'd have her good days and bad days. But I think because of the followers that grew, she felt she could help other people. As her followers grew, her confidence grew, and I think she felt as if she'd finally found something that she could do.' It helped her embrace the deaf and LGBTQ+ communities and gave her a sense of identity. 'She felt as if she belonged, whereas she never really knew where she belonged.' Immy showed her followers what life in a psychiatric hospital was like, and was open about her struggles. But she could also be joyful, and often got her family involved, usually her mum. 'You'd be sat in the evenings, and she'd say, 'Mum: I've got an idea – I want you to be in it.' I loved watching her laugh.' Immy was getting brand and charity collaborations, and positive messages from people who said she'd helped them. 'She just couldn't believe it, and we were just so excited for her,' says Louise. She was desperate to try to live more independently, even though Louise thought she wasn't ready to leave hospital. 'She was determined. She'd been in there for four years; she wanted out, she wanted a normal life.' It was a worry, she says, having Immy live an hour away in Brighton, and she would video-call her often – again and again if she didn't pick up. 'She didn't want me to keep worrying. She was like, 'Mum: I'm 24 – let me have my life.'' And she seemed to be doing well, though Louise could never relax. Early in 2022, Immy took an overdose. Nine months after that, in November, she told her support worker she had been on a pro-suicide forum and had bought poison from it. Louise didn't know about this until just before the inquest. The police went to do a welfare check on Immy, but didn't take a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter – something Louise was familiar with in all the years of trying to get Immy the care she needed. She would go to see doctors with her, she says, and there would be no interpreter. Louise would have to accompany Immy, even when Immy didn't want her to, so that she could explain things to her. After that police visit, Immy wasn't seen by a mental health professional for several weeks. A few days after Christmas with her parents, Immy harmed herself and went to hospital but left before being seen by the mental health team. She told her parents that she'd been in hospital, and Ray immediately went to see her. 'We didn't know how bad she was,' says Louise. 'The plan was that he was going to bring her home, but she said she wasn't coming back.' Of course they were alarmed, but sadly this wasn't out of the ordinary for Immy. 'She self-harmed a lot. That was her coping mechanism. We had no clue that anything else was going on.' Immy had sent a text to her support worker, saying she thought she needed to be admitted to psychiatric hospital and that she 'could easily go to the last resort' even though she didn't want to. In another message to her psychologist the following day, she said she planned to take poison, but also said she didn't have any (she did – it was later discovered she had already bought some online). She agreed to be admitted to a mental health crisis facility, but that didn't happen that day. A meeting that she was supposed to have with her care coordinator also didn't happen. The inquest found failings in mental health care contributed to Immy's death. The coroner also highlighted systemic challenges to deaf patients, particularly the shortage of BSL interpreters. With grim irony, the inquest itself had to be adjourned at one point because of a lack of interpreters. Louise says the family has received no apology. The trial of Law isn't due to start until early next year, and he has been charged only over deaths in Canada. She says she feels stuck. 'I always feel as if I'm waiting for the next thing. It's just hard.' She likes to talk about Immy, but she finds it hard to watch her videos. 'The dogs start crying when they hear her voice, especially Whitney – she still recognises Immy's voice, and then that upsets me.' There are some lovely videos of Immy and her mum together, including the two of them singing and signing You Are My Sunshine – the first song, Immy wrote, that her mum taught her with sign language. She touched a lot of people in her short life. It has helped to receive messages from people who were helped by Immy's videos and her work on deaf awareness and mental health, says Louise. 'I've had some that said: 'She basically saved my life.'' Poisoned: Killer in the Post is on Channel 4 at 9pm on Wednesday 9 and Thursday 10 July For more information on online safety for young people, visit the Thomas William Parfett Foundation and the Molly Rose Foundation In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at
