Tulip votes to ban pro-Palestine group as a 'terrorist organisation’

Tulip Siddiq was among the UK lawmakers who voted to designate the campaign group Palestine Action as a "terrorist" organisation.

On Wednesday, the UK Parliament voted 385 to 26 in favour of the measure against the group.

A post on X from 5Pillars mentioned Tulip among the MPs, stating, "The following Muslim MPs voted FOR and AGAINST the banning of the direct action group Palestine Action yesterday in parliament. Most Muslim MPs did not register a vote."

The move follows an incident last month in which Palestine Action activists broke into a military base and sprayed red paint on two aircraft in protest against the UK's support for Israel's war on Gaza, reports Al Jazeera.

The ban places Palestine Action in the same legal category as groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS), making it a criminal offence to support or be associated with the protest group.

"Let us be clear: 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," said independent MP Zarah Sultana, who was suspended from the Labour Party last year.

Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive of Amnesty International UK, condemned the move as "unprecedented legal overreach", warning that it granted authorities "massive powers to arrest and detain people, suppress speech and reporting, conduct surveillance and take other measures".

"Using them against a direct-action protest group is an egregious abuse of what they were created for," he said.

The order went before the House of Lords on Thursday. If approved, the ban will come into effect in the following days.

Palestine Action, which has called the move "unjustified" and an "abuse of power",  challenged the decision in court.

Founded in July 2020, Palestine Action describes itself as using "disruptive tactics" to target "corporate enablers" of the Israeli arms trade, including Israel-based Elbit Systems and French multinational Thales.

The UK government has accused the group of causing millions of pounds in damages through its actions.

On Tuesday, Palestine Action said its activists had blocked access to an Elbit site in Bristol, in south-west England. Other members reportedly occupied the rooftop of a subcontractor's premises in Suffolk, which the group linked to Elbit.

UN experts appointed by the Human Rights Council had previously urged the UK to reconsider its plans, arguing that property damage without the intent to harm life should not be classified as terrorism.

UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper defended the decision, stating that violence and criminal damage had no place in legitimate protest and that a zero-tolerance approach was essential to ensure national security.

According to Al Jazeera's Veselinovic, many MPs felt "boxed in" by the vote, believing they had no choice but to proscribe all three groups together.

"If they had voted 'no', that would have meant that those two other organisations that they wanted to ban could not have been banned," she said.