Anonymous street artist Banksy’s mural showing a judge hitting a protester with a gavel has been removed from the wall of a court building in London two days after it was revealed, in what appeared to be a response to a crackdown on protests in solidarity with the Palestine Action campaign group.
Images shared by AP news agency on Wednesday showed a worker removing the new artwork by Banksy, which shows a bewigged judge bringing down a gavel on a protester sprawled on the ground, clutching a blood-stained placard, after it appeared at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, the United Kingdom on Monday.
According to PA Media, work began to remove the image on Tuesday and resumed on Wednesday.
The mural appears to be a commentary on the mass arrests of people protesting the ban on the campaign group Palestine Action.
In July, Britain designated the activist network a “terrorist organisation” after its members stormed a Royal Air Force base and damaged military aircraft. Supporting or belonging to the group now carries criminal penalties.
But rights groups and campaigners have accused the British government of criminalising pro-Palestinian activism, saying the ban threatens the right to peaceful protest.
Lawyers and civil liberties advocates argue that proscribing Palestine Action sets a dangerous precedent for restricting activism on foreign policy issues, with Amnesty International calling the decision by the Labour government “a disturbing legal overreach”.
Campaigners have accused the Labour government led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer of allowing the export of military items to Israel. Amid mounting pressure, Starmer last month announced that the UK would recognise the state of Palestine.
Banksy has long used his work to highlight Palestinian struggles under Israeli occupation. His murals in the occupied West Bank include ones that depict a girl conducting a body search on an Israeli soldier, a dove wearing a flak jacket, and a masked protester hurling a bouquet.
In 2017, he opened the “Walled Off Hotel”, in Bethlehem, designed to offer what he called “the worst view in the world” a direct reference to Israel’s separation barrier known as the apartheid wall, which stands in front of the hotel.
The post Banksy mural of UK judge hitting protester scrubbed from London court wall appeared first on Al Jazeera.
