We attach the group’s minutes of its February meeting thanks to group member Lesley for the work in compiling them and for other members Fiona and Andrew for their contributions. We do not produce a newsletter so these minutes, although longer than normally the case with minutes, contain items of wider interest.
Human rights shot to the top of the agenda this week following the High Court’s decision concerning Palestine Action which has been another blow for the government.
High Court finds the ban on Palestine Action ‘disproportionate’
February 2026
The High Court has ruled that the ban on Palestine Action is disproportionate and banning it unlawful. The ban remains in place however as the government is minded to appeal the decision which will take place later this month. The decision is a major victory for the right of free speech and the right of assembly. Liberty and Amnesty have both appealed to the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, to respect the decision. It represents a severe blow to the government. Around 2,500 have been arrested during protests.
It is worth remembering the way PA was banned by the then Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper. Almost certainly she knew the likelihood of achieving a successful vote in parliament was unlikely, so they were lumped in with two extreme white supremacist groups, the Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russia Imperial Movement. Labour members were then whipped to pass the measure. Local MPs Sir Desmond Swayne and Danny Kruger both voted with the government. John Glen MP is not shown as voting. At one stage, the Home Office attempted to suggest they were funded by Iran, a story The Times and the Daily Telegraph fell for, but which they now no longer support.
The Board of Deputies for British Jews are reported to be extremely concerned by the ruling. Lord Sumption interview on the BBC’s PM programme thought the decision vulnerable on appeal. He thought the problem for the government was that the ‘overreach’ of the legislation which meant those holding banners or placards were arrested. He thought PA a ‘thoroughly nasty organisation’.
The government seems particularly determined to clamp down on this organisation and to continue its support for Israel despite the fearful loss of life in Gaza now put at over 72,000. Violence in the West Bank continues apace with estimates of over 1,000 deaths with many more driven from their homes by settler violence.
Elbit Systems, the Israeli arms firm with plants in the UK, has been at the centre of the protests. It manufactures drones which are alleged to be used in Gaza to commit war crimes, a claim Elbit denies.
This is undoubted good news but whether it will survive the Appeal Court remains to be seen. One way or another, by legislating against protest, arresting supporters doing no more than wave placards, and planting fake stories in gullible and compliant media, the government seems determined to support Israel whatever it does and how ever many people it kills or drives from their homes.
Sources: Sky News, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, CAAT, Jewish Chronicle.
Refugees and immigration have dropped down the political agenda. Irregular arrivals to EU fall
February 2026
With nearly all the political attention focused on the future of the Labour government and Sir Keir’s likely survival together with the steady stream of resignations from No. 10 (soon be time for the old joke ‘will the last person to leave remember …’ etc) attention has shifted from the near constant focus on immigration and in particular the boat crossings.
This month the focus has been on Europe, specifically the EU, who are developing a 5-year strategy prioritising deterrence, deportation and cooperation with non-EU countries. In the words of Ursula von der Leyen, ‘Europe decides who comes to the EU’. The view of Amnesty International is that the EU risks demonstrating complicity in rights violations by its proposed dependency on third countries. So far deals have been made with Tunisia, Mauritania, Egypt and Morocco, none of which has blameless human rights records. It is worth noting that irregular arrivals in the EU are down by 25% in 2025. While many European countries are making conditions harder for irregular arrivals, Spain has decided to regularise the status of 500,000 undocumented migrants, emphasising their value to the country.
Deportation is also looming large in the UK. Under threat of shutting down their visas, Angola, Namibia and the DRC have agreed to take back migrants claiming asylum in the UK. Numbers of removals have been made, especially to Albania, Brazil and India. In 2024, 32% of enforced removals were asylum-related, 25% of voluntary removals. The voluntary return numbers are not only people agreeing to go back home, but include anyone not going through the application process properly for whatever reason (the number of these who actually leave the country is unknown, of course).
The ‘One in, one out’ arrangement with France has so far resulted in 281 people going to France and 350 coming the other way. The journal ‘Medical Justice’ says that a high proportion of those involved are survivors of trafficking and/or torture.
Reduced backlog
In Britain, the backlog of asylum cases is going down although, as notes before, the number of refusals has gone up (probably due to less care being taken in the interviewing) so that there is a bigger backlog of tribunal appeals (and fewer qualified staff to deal with them). Barrister Colin Yeo has observed, “The only group to benefit from these long waiting times are those whose cases will ultimately fail; by the time that happens they will have been living here for years and it will be even harder for the Government to remove them than would otherwise have been the case”. As of last September, 17,000 claimants had been waiting more than a year for a decision.
The UK Government has been publicising its plans for new ways of dealing with the immigrant issue. Among them is a plan for ‘Named Community Sponsorship’ whereby local communities take the responsibility for inviting and incorporating migrants into the community. This would create safe and legal routes into the UK, but leaves the onus on local private projects and may result in cherry picking. The Ukrainian process would be the template, but no timeline has been given.
The Home Office is also talking of trialling new ways of housing irregular migrants to replace hotels following Refugee Action’s suggestion that authority for asylum seekers’ accommodation should go to local councils, not the Home Office. Local councils are resisting for fear of hostile public reaction.
The BBC have reported that there has been a surge in the number of refugee households that are now homeless, up from 3,520 in 2021/2 to 19,310 in 2024/5. The increase in waiting times and shortening of time available to find accommodation post-assessment are blamed.
In the wider world, the Sudan conflict has had a profound effect on its neighbour countries with 14 million displaced persons. 1.2 million have moved to Chad, a country where 42% of the population live below the poverty line.
March for Refugees
Finally, for anyone eager for exercise, Refugee Action are organising a March for Refugees, sponsored walking 30, 60 or l00 miles through the month. Details at Sign up to March for Refugees.
Government making protesting more and more difficult
February 2026
Successive governments have taken more and more steps to limit the right to protest. More laws are planned and existing laws are used to prevent or obstruct the right to protest. The laws have been used particularly against Palestine Action which has been banned on spurious grounds. A recent Channel 4 programme Palestine Action: The Truth Behind The Ban (registration needed) exposes the shaky grounds for the ban with the government alleged to have planted stories willing printed by the Times and other right wing papers claiming Iranian funding. Further legislation is planned to prevent repeated protests. Scotland is to hold a judicial review in March over the ban on Palestine Action.
On 4 February a jury at Woolwich Crown Court acquitted all of the first six Palestine Action activists of charges of aggravated burglary or violent disorder at Elbit Systems Filton factory. None had been charged with terrorism offences.
After more mass arrests of peaceful protesters at Wormwood Scrubs, the hunger and thirst strikes have now ended with five members released on bail, although the health implications for them will continue into the future. The family and lawyer of thirst-striker Umer Khalid claim they have been denied access to him since his hospitalisation on 26 January. By the time the remaining prisoners are charged, some individuals will have been in pre-trial detention for 2 years which is well over the six-month limit. The actions of the Palestine Action group in sabotaging Israel-linked arms manufacture Elbit, have resulted in the closure of the factory. Elbit has lost a £2 billion training contract with the UK government but continues to supply other military equipment and services.
The Extinction Rebellion appeal, backed by Defend our Juries, which claimed that the jury’s right to vote according to their conscience had been interfered with in the judge’s summary at their trial, was dismissed in a Court of Appeal ruling. This, somewhat incongruously, recognised the validity of the conscience clause but denied their claim of judicial interference in this case.
Proposed changes to ECHR
David Lammy, Secretary of State for Justice, is seeking to limit access to rights in Article 8 of the ECHR for some violent prisoners. See a previous post for fuller discussion.
Liberty is joining forces with Amnesty International UK, Greenpeace, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and Quakers in Britain, for a mass lobby of Parliament to defend our right to protest. Join us in London at Westminster Hall in Parliament from 2pm–5pm on Tuesday 17 March 2026.
The use of facial recognition technology advancing with few controls
February 2026
One of the features of the Chinese state is the massive use of facial recognition technology throughout China. It is a vast system with millions of cameras and is used to monitor every movement of its citizens. The system is used to control every citizen and it means no one can move or meet someone without it being observed and logged by the state. It is the penultimate example of the panopticon in a modern setting.
Some are remarkably relaxed about its use in the UK believing claims made that it will be properly controlled and will be used to catch criminals, drug dealers and the like. So innocent people have nothing to fear. Read on …
Right to Privacy
The government’s Biometric Technology Consultation (to close on 12 February) aims to help develop a new legal framework for the use of facial recognition and similar technologies by law enforcement. Despite the landmark UK Court of Appeal ruling in 2020, that found the South Wales Police use of automated facial recognition (AFR) technology was unlawful, police forces in different parts of the country have increased their use of Live Facial Recognition (LFR). As these systems contain the biometric data of huge numbers of people, some concerns from human rights groups, including Amnesty and Liberty, are briefly summarised here.
The first concern is to ensure that a new legal framework should apply to all use of ‘biometric technologies’ by all law enforcement and other organisations and should be transparent. Complex mathematical processing is used to identify facial features and generate ‘similarity scores’ but the internal logic of how a match is calculated is hidden from both the police operators and the public. The authorities cannot explain the specific basis for an intervention nor account for why or if the technology produces biased or inaccurate results.
Second, it is concerning that the use of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) is becoming widespread and easily accessible, with retail outlets taking on a quasi law enforcement role, aided and supported by the police, and drawing on the same or similar databases. It is becoming normalised in schools, in commercial and retail settings, with information flowing between sectors and under a patchwork of inconsistent laws which the public does not understand and find almost impossible to challenge.
This was demonstrated in a recent Guardian report (6th February) on the apprehension and removal from Sainsbury’s store in Elephant and Castle of a customer who had been wrongly matched by staff with a photo of a different customer flagged by their Facewatch camera. In order to prove his innocence he had to apply to the agency using a QR code and submit a photo and a copy of his passport to them before they declared him not on their blacklist.
The following is a list of factors of concern to human rights groups:
– Transparency – to include how and when the technology is being used and the clarity of accessible information about rights.
– Whether biometric data is acquired overtly or covertly.
– Whether it is collected voluntarily or involuntarily. Pervasive monitoring is leading to the normalisation of suspicion less surveillance.
-The subject’s status – whether or not someone is the intended subject of a police investigation or an innocent bystander walking past a camera.
– Who has access to the data and the results.
– The space, context and location of deployment. Expectations of privacy vary significantly between a quiet park and a busy thoroughfare.
– Whether the system is used to make inferences about a person’s internal state, their emotion or intent.
– Whether the interference is demonstrably ‘necessary’ and ‘proportionate’ to a legitimate aim, such as the prevention of serious crime.
– Whether assessments consider the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) to ensure the technology does not have a discriminatory impact.
– Algorithm bias: whether this performs differently based on race, gender, or age, which could lead to the over-policing of marginalised communities.
– Watchlist bias: whether scrutiny of criteria can ensure groups are not disproportionately targeted based on protected characteristics.
– Bias in interpretation of identification patterns claiming to provide predictive evidence.
Human Rights groups say that any new regulation should protect privacy and limit data-sharing between public authorities, law enforcement and private companies; and that as the state gains powerful new ways to monitor citizens, a strong and resilient oversight body with true independence is needed to protect human rights and dignity.
We are pleased to attach the latest monthly report on the state of the death penalty around the world thanks to group member Lesley for the extensive work in compiling it. Good and bad but mostly the latter, with Florida leading the charge in the US and Iran engaged in a continuing programme of executions. As ever we have no information on China which probably carries out more executions than the rest of the world combined but whose details are a state secret.
Around 25 turned out for the 114th vigil on a wet and cold evening in Salisbury. We continue because there is no sign of a real prospect of peace in the Middle East and people continue to die in Gaza. The death toll has risen to 72,027 according to the Peninsular with Israeli strikes continuing in the territory. The so called Board of Peace is to hold its next meeting in Washington on 19th of this month with no Palestinians present Al Jazeera reports. Over 500 have now been killed since the peace process began.
Attempts to allow foreign journalists into Gaza to document evidence there have failed yet again. The Foreign Press Association has been engaged in a fruitless campaign for around 4 years now and the Israeli Supreme Court has decided to defer a decision yet again. It has postponed making a decision 10 times and finally ran out of patience. However, it allowed the Israeli lawyer to present their evidence in closed session. There are criticisms of the FPA for endlessly pursuing these applications when it is clear an enfeebled court is never going to allow foreign journalists in.
Three journalists from the Egyptian Committee for Gaza Relief were possibly murdered by an IDF airstrike according to +972 despite being some distance from the yellow line and in a clearly marked car. The IDF claim that the ‘suspects were operating a drone affiliated to Hamas’ which seems extremely unlikely but without independent evidence it is hard to be sure.
“We will continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state” Bezalel Smotrich Finance minister
This follows the recent decision by the Israeli cabinet to ease restrictions on Jewish people acquiring land on the West Bank in contravention of the Oslo Accords. The process of acquiring land by Jewish people will be governed by an element of the IDF and the need to go through the civil administration will no longer be necessary. The decision has drawn a rare condemnation from JD Vance.
A positive message to come out of the endless horror of death and destruction comes from the West England Bylines which is a citizen’s journalist outlet and contains a poem by Lama Kuhail:
In Gaza’s Streets, where pain does flow, A wounded land, the world must know. Through darkened skies and broken ground, A son of courage still resounds. With every tear and every fight, They chase the dawn, Defy the night.
A video of the vigil with thanks to Peter Gloyns for permission to post it. Picture shows wet attendees!
David Lammy seeking to limit access to article 8 rights for some violent prisoners
February 2026
David Lammy, the Secretary of State for Justice, is proposing to establish Supermax style prison units similar to that established in the USA. In addition, he wants to limit the applicability of the ECHR article 8 rights to those prisoners. The supermax prison in Florence, Colorado has been criticised by human rights groups including Amnesty: “The US government’s callous and dehumanising practice of holding prisoners in prolonged solitary confinement in the country’s only federal super-maximum security prison amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and is in violation of international law“.
‘Not designed for humanity’
The inhuman nature of the facility is encapsulated in this quote from Howstuffworks:
“The only time that inmates are allowed out of their cells is for an hour of exercise. Handcuffed and shackled at their feet, inmates are either led to an empty room with a single pull-up bar, or taken outside to the yard, where they are locked alone inside a caged pen.
“Robert Hood, a former warden at the ADX told The New York Times that the ADX was “not designed for humanity. When it’s 23 hours a day in a room with a slit of a window where you can’t even see the Rocky Mountains — let’s be candid here. It’s not designed for rehabilitation. Period. End of story.””
A report was published‘Independent Review of Separation Centres‘ by Jonathan Hall KC into separation in prisons which contains a section reporting on his visit to the facility in Colorado. He was not given full access which might explain his rather benign view of the facility and contrasts markedly with the above extract. He does not address or even seem to be aware of the inhuman nature of the prison and its dreadful effects on inmates.
Lammy is concerned at the prospects of article 8 rights being applied if such units are established. Article 8 is the respect for family and private life and part 2 of the article limits public authorities from interference with these rights except for the prevention of disorder or crime or for the protection of others (that is prison officers). Clearly, by establishing any facility remotely like the inhuman system operating in the US would almost certainly lead to legal protests and action.
British prisons are in a state of almost permanent crisis. According to the Howard League for Penal Reform, we currently have 87,249 incarcerated [accessed 4 February], the highest per capita total in Europe. Many of the prisons are decrepit, suffering severe infestations and prisoners are often confined to their cells for 23 hours a day. Recidivism is 28.9% [Government figures – January to March 2024] with those serving sentences of less than 12 months having a rate of 66%. Numerous reports conclude the system is not working.
The proposal has raised serious concerns although the idea has received strong support from the shadow justice secretary Mr Nick Timothy (Con) who wants the UK to leave the ECHR altogether. There are issues of how to handle dangerous prisoners who pose a risk to those whose duty is to guard them. Copying the inhuman US system is not an answer. The chief executive of the Howard League has pointed out that it is not necessary to impose such levels of inhuman conditions and this was not recommended by the report.
Another concern is that limiting the application of ECHR rights might be followed by other proposals by one government or another, all of whom would like to see us leave the Convention. Perhaps we should ponder Dostoevsky who observed the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
We were pleased to host a talk last month by the author and journalist Peter Oborne about his new book Complicit: Britain’s role in the Destruction of Gaza. A detailed and hard-hitting review has been published by the British Palestine Project and is a recommended read. It amplifies the severe criticism of the BBC for its many failings in its reporting and in particular, never inviting acknowledged Jewish experts to be interviewed and almost completely failing to report on the hundreds of RAF flights which have taken place over Gaza the purpose of which is unclear.
It is also extremely critical of the British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and contrasts his activities as a human rights lawyer and his highly questionable support for Israel now. Other parts of our media come in for criticism as well.
Burma, or Myanmar, has slipped out of the news in recent months but the brutal activities of the military Junta continue. Violence has lasted for 6 decades now during which massacres have been carried out and around 800,000 have been forced to flee. Elections are promised which will be sham. There is considerable resistance, both peaceful and armed to the regime. As part of the election process some of the 20,000 political prisoners will be released according to the latest edition of the Burma Campaign News (Issue 49, 2026). Political prisoners are subject to horrific treatment, held in appalling conditions, subjected to torture and denied medical care. Children as young as 2 years old are held as proxies for their parents.
Amnesty reports that the military Junta has committed widespread repression and abuse in every facet of life in the country since seizing power on February 1, 2021, Amnesty International, Fortify Rights, and Human Rights Watch said last month. The military’s atrocities since the coup, which include war crimes and crimes against humanity, escalated over the past year as the Junta sought to entrench its rule through abusive military operations and stage-managed elections.
The UN Special Rapporteur said in London in December:
“The people of Myanmar have shown extraordinary courage. They deserve an international response that matches their determination the United Kingdom can play a decisive role and now is the moment to act”.
Following a submission by Gambia, the International Court of Justice has in January, commenced hearing evidence of genocide against the Rohingya people many of whom fled the country. The ICJ issued provisional measures to protect the Rohingya which have been ignored by the Junta.
The UK government is criticized for not having made any new, targeted sanctions since 2024 and there is also a concern that the Junta is allowed to host a military attaché in London.
China’s role
The role of the Chinese is significant in the future of the country. Currently, it is reported by Foreign Affairs that China is ‘supporting both sides but with the hope that the Junta will win through in the end’ despite its appalling record of human rights abuses. It can tolerate a divided Myanmar as long the the main power holders remain dependant on China for trade and energy. It is also reported that China has provided $3bn of aid to the Junta.
Although it is true that the UK can play a role, the resource rich country is attractive to China which exhibits little interest in human rights within its borders or in foreign countries. It is their role which is probably crucial and as long as it continues to support the military then the current path of violence will likely continue.
As well as the Burma Campaign, another organisation of note is Advance Myanmar.
Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire 