Censorship

EXPLAINER

MPs in the UK have voted to proscribe the group as a terrorist organisation, but what has it actually done?

Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom voted overwhelmingly this week to proscribe the campaign group, Palestine Action, as a terrorist organisation under anti-terrorism laws, putting the group on a par with armed groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).

A draft order to amend the Terrorism Act 2000 to do this, brought by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, passed through the House of Commons on Wednesday by 385 votes to 26.

Cooper tabled the order in parliament just days after Palestine Action activists broke into RAF Brize Norton, the largest station of the Royal Air Force in Oxfordshire, and sprayed two military planes with red paint, resulting in millions of pounds of criminal damage, according to police.

On Friday, the High Court in London is hearing a challenge to the order. Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori has asked for a temporary block on the legislation.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the Airbus Voyager incident in an X post, saying: “The act of vandalism committed at RAF Brize Norton is disgraceful.”

Palestine Action describes itself as “a pro-Palestinian organisation which disrupts the arms industry in the United Kingdom with direct action”. It says it is “committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”.

The government claims it is a “terrorist” outfit.

But what has the group actually done?

What happened at Brize Norton?

In the highest-profile move made by the group so far, activists sprayed red paint into the turbine engines of two Airbus Voyager aircraft, used for air-to-air refuelling.

According to Manaal Siddiqui, a spokesperson for Palestine Action, “These [Royal Air Force] aircraft can be used to refuel and have been used to refuel Israeli fighter jets.” He added that planes from Brize Norton fly to the British air force base in Cyprus, from where they are “dispatched on spy missions and that intelligence is shared with the Israeli government and the Israeli air forces”.

What else has the group done?

Since its founding in July 2020, Palestine Action (PA) has carried out hundreds of protests across the UK aimed at disrupting the operations of companies they accuse of profiting from Israeli military operations, with a particular focus on the Israeli arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems.

Palestine Action members’ tactics typically involve breaking into facilities, chaining themselves to machinery, daubing buildings with red paint and destroying equipment.

They include the following incidents:

• The group launched a series of break-ins at Elbit’s Ferranti site in Oldham, near Manchester in northern England. Between 2020 and early 2022, the site was repeatedly occupied and vandalised, culminating in Elbit closing the facility in January 2022 – an outcome Palestine Action declared as a major victory.
• In 2021, the group occupied the Leicester drone factory operated by UAV Tactical Systems, a subsidiary of Elbit. Activists chained themselves to the roof for nearly a week. Ten people were arrested, but later acquitted.
• Throughout 2022, PA’s actions became more frequent. In April, they blockaded another Elbit site in Braunstone, Leicestershire. In June, they broke into the Thales UK factory in Glasgow and caused more than 1 million pounds ($1.37m) of damage with smoke bombs and property destruction. Five activists were jailed.
• Following the launch of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, Palestine Action intensified its efforts. They targeted the BBC’s headquarters in London with red paint to protest against the broadcaster’s perceived pro-Israel bias, and blockaded facilities of arms manufacturers including Lockheed Martin, the US aerospace and defence group which has a base in London, and Leonardo, the defence and security group.
• Palestine Action has also expanded internationally. In November 2023, its newly launched US branch occupied the roof of an Elbit facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire, with three activists arrested and later released with misdemeanour charges.
• In August 2024, activists drove a van into Elbit’s headquarters in Bristol, stormed the building and caused extensive damage. At about the same time, they spray-painted the Ministry of Defence, in central London, red and defaced a statue of Arthur Balfour with tomato ketchup inside the House of Commons. Balfour was a former Conservative prime minister who, as serving foreign secretary in 1917, authored the Balfour Declaration which supported the establishment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
• In June 2025, the group carried out one of its most provocative actions to date: infiltrating RAF Brize Norton, the UK’s largest airbase. Activists used electric scooters to breach security and vandalised military aircraft with red paint.

What does Palestine Action say about being banned?

In a statement posted on its X profile, Palestine Action said: “The real crime here is not red paint being sprayed on these warplanes, but the war crimes that have been enabled with those planes because of the UK government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.”

The group added that the government’s move could risk criminalising legitimate protest.

The statement also accused Starmer of “hypocrisy” since the prime minister, back in 2003, supported protesters who broke into an RAF base to stop US bombers heading to Iraq. At the time, Starmer was a lawyer.

“I think it’s a very knee-jerk reaction from an embarrassed government, and it’s an overblown reaction,” Siddiqui said.

Siddiqui said it was unprecedented for Palestine Action to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation. “The majority of the proscribed groups are international. The majority of them take actions in very, very different ways. Palestine Action would be a complete outlier. It’s a draconian approach for the government to stifle protests that they just don’t like. It’s genuinely terrifying for anyone who cares about civil liberties in the UK.”

In all, 81 groups are proscribed in the UK under the Terrorism Act 2000. They include political movements with armed wings such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as armed groups like ISIS (ISIL), al-Qaeda and Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan.

American universities have long feared that the Chinese government will restrict its country’s students from attending institutions that cross Beijing’s sensitive political lines.

Universities still fear that consequence today, but the most immediate threat is no longer posed by the Chinese government. Now, as the latest punishment meted out to the Trump administration’s preeminent academic scapegoat shows, it’s our own government posing the threat.

In a May 22 letter, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced she revoked Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, meaning the university’s thousands of international students must transfer immediately or lose their legal status. Harvard can no longer enroll future international students either.

Noem cited Harvard’s failure to hand over international student disciplinary records in response to a prior letter and, disturbingly, the Trump administration’s desire to “root out the evils of anti-Americanism” on campus. Among the most alarming demands in this latest missive was that Harvard supply all video of “any protest activity” by any international student within the last five years.

Harvard immediately sued Noem and her department and other agencies, rightfully calling the revocation “a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” and within hours a judge issued a temporary restraining order against the revocation.

“Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,” Noem wrote on X about the punishment. And on Tuesday, the administration halted interviews for all new student visas.

This is not how a free country treats its schools — or the international visitors who attend them.

Noem’s warning will, no doubt, be heard loud and clear. That’s because universities — which depend on international students’ tuition dollars — have already had reason to worry that they will lose access to international students for displeasing censorial government officials.

In 2010, Beijing revoked recognition of the University of Calgary’s accreditation in China, meaning Chinese students at the Canadian school suddenly risked paying for a degree worth little at home. The reason? The university’s granting of an honorary degree to the Dalai Lama the year before. “We have offended our Chinese partners by the very fact of bringing in the Dalai Lama, and we have work to resolve that issue,” a spokesperson said.

Beijing restored recognition over a year later, but many Chinese students had already left. Damage done.

Similarly, when UC San Diego hosted the Dalai Lama as commencement speaker in 2017, punishment followed. The China Scholarship Council suspended funding for academics intending to study at UCSD, and an article in the state media outlet Global Times recommended that Chinese authorities “not recognize diplomas or degree certificates issued by the university.”

This kind of direct punishment doesn’t happen very frequently. But the threat always exists, and it creates fear that administrators take into account when deciding how their universities operate.

American universities now must fear that they will suffer this penalty too, but at an even greater scale: revocation of access not just to students from China, but all international students. That’s a huge potential loss. At Harvard, for example, international students make up a whopping 27% of total enrollment.

Whether they publicly acknowledge it or not, university leaders probably are considering whether they need to adjust their behavior to avoid seeing international student tuition funds dry up.

Will our colleges and universities increase censorship and surveillance of international students? Avoid inviting commencement speakers disfavored by the Trump administration? Pressure academic departments against hiring any professors whose social media comments or areas of research will catch the eye of mercurial government officials?

And, equally disturbing, will they be willing to admit that they are now making these calculations at all? Unlike direct punishments by the Trump administration or Beijing, this chilling effect is likely to be largely invisible.

Harvard might be able to survive without international students’ tuition. But a vast number of other universities could not. The nation as a whole would feel their loss too: In the 2023-24 academic year, international students contributed a record-breaking $43.8 billion to the American economy.

And these students — who have uprooted their lives for the promise of what American education offers — are the ones who will suffer the most, as they experience weeks or months of panic and upheaval while being used as pawns in this campaign to punish higher ed.

If the Trump administration is seeking to root out “anti-Americanism,” it can begin by surveying its own behavior in recent months. Freedom of expression is one of our country’s most cherished values. Censorship, surveillance and punishment of government critics do not belong here.

Sarah McLaughlin is senior scholar on global expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and author of the forthcoming book “Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech.”

Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s film, It Was Just an Accident, has been awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The dissident has endured years of travel bans and prison terms in Iran for his filmmaking, which served as inspiration for his award-winning work.

Government says funding freeze is due to the university’s alleged failure to address anti-Semitism on campus.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has said it is terminating $60m in federal grants to Harvard University, further escalating an ongoing feud between the Ivy Leave institute and President Donald Trump’s administration over alleged anti-Semitism, presidential control and the limits of academic freedom.

“Due to Harvard University’s continued failure to address anti-Semitic harassment and race discrimination, HHS is terminating multiple multi-year grant awards – totalling approximately $60 million over their full duration,” the department said on X on Monday.

It said discrimination will “not be tolerated” on campus, adding that “federal funds must support institutions that protect all students.”

HHS is taking decisive action to uphold civil rights in higher education. Due to Harvard University’s continued failure to address anti-Semitic harassment and race discrimination, HHS is terminating multiple multi-year grant awards—totaling approximately $60 million over their… pic.twitter.com/99aUd4ZVYF

— HHS.gov (@HHSGov) May 20, 2025

The Trump administration has already frozen more than $2.2bn in federal grants to Harvard.

Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon also announced earlier this month that the university would no longer be receiving public funding for research as it had made a “mockery” of higher education, in a letter addressed to Harvard.

“Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution, and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment, and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni,” McMahon wrote in the letter.

Harvard has sued the administration in response, alleging that the funding freeze violates the First Amendment and federal law, which bars the president from directly or indirectly ordering the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to conduct or terminate an audit or investigation.

Harvard President Alan Garber announced last week that the university will use $250m of its own funds to support research.

The feud between the president and Harvard – a prestigious Ivy League campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts – began in March, when Trump sought to impose new rules and regulations on top schools across the country that had played host to pro-Palestinian protests over the past year.

Trump has called such protests “illegal” and accused participants of anti-Semitism. But student protest leaders have described their actions as a peaceful response to Israel’s war in Gaza, which has elicited concerns about human rights abuses, including genocide.

The Trump administration announced the first funding freeze in April. Harvard had rejected the administration’s series of demands to tackle alleged anti-Semitism, saying they would subject it to undue government control. The demands had included revamping its disciplinary system, eliminating its diversity initiatives and agreeing to an external audit of programmes deemed anti-Semitic by the administration.

Trump and prominent conservatives in the US have also long accused Harvard and other universities of propagating extreme left-wing views and stifling right-wing perspectives.