Unionist student spokesman demands action over Palestine Action display of support at Queen's University Belfast

The chants, along with “up Palestine Action”, were heard at the gates of Queen’s University Belfast on Thursday.

The group has been a proscribed organisation in the UK since July, when the government added it to the existing list of 95 banned terror groups (also adding a “neo-Nazi” group and a Russian “ultranationalist” group at the same time, taking the total to 98).

By the start of October in London alone, some 134 people had been charged with “an offence of showing support to Palestine Action” according to Met police.

As well as pro-Palestine Action chants, some protestors at Queen’s yesterday also displayed a banner reading ‘Hands off our students / Support Mahmoud Khalil [a Palestine activist detained in the USA] / PSNI off our campus’.

The PSNI was asked about the protest, and told the News Letter: “Police were in attendance at a protest in the Elmwood Avenue of south Belfast this afternoon, Thursday, October 16. It passed without incident.”

Matthew Shanks, spokesman for the Democratic Unionist Association at Queen’s (the university’s branch of the DUP), said of the demonstration: “We thought it was quite remarkable, because obviously it [Palestine Action] is a proscribed terrorist organisation – a criminal organisation.”

The 21-year-old former Ulster University student believes university staff may have been present at the protest, and if so “that presents serious questions”.

He said: “I don’t think it’s really appropriate, or beneficial, or good for students or wider society, that this is allowed to pass off without much interest from the police or any kind of investigatory authority…

"What reassurance can the police give, or any authorities give, that this is being monitored to some degree and its not being allowed to pass off without any kind of notice whatsoever?”

He added that the university could well make the argument that the protest was not on campus, but on a public street alongside it.

"Ultimately they’re using Queen’s as a backdrop for their action,” he said.

“Whether they like it or not there’s an association there.”

On the subject of the “PSNI off our campus” banner, Mr Shanks said it is part of a campaign to “tarnish the reputation of the PSNI in the eyes of young people and put them off trusting the police as a service or joining them; almost trying to create a fear factor for anyone who’s looking to go down that career path”.

Queen’s University Belfast has been contacted about the protest and a response is awaited.

Last month the News Letter reported that Newry Mourne and Down District councillor Martin Hearty had posted pictures of himself on Facebook wearing a t-shirt with the words "Palestine Action" in front of a sign saying "I support Palestine Action".

He had been speaking at an event at the council-run Tommy Makem Arts and Community Centre in Keady, Co Armagh.