Rights organizations released a joint statement Wednesday condemning the UK’s conviction of pro-Palestine organizers Ben Jamal and Chris Nineham.

Organizations spoke about “grave concerns” over the broader impacts of these convictions, writing:

Many of the human rights we cherish – civil liberties, workers’ protections, votes for women, environmental safeguards – were won through protest. Recasting those same forms of action as inherently suspect risks forgetting that history and hollowing out the very rights those struggles secured…these convictions are wrong, and the trajectory they put the UK on is one that anybody who cares about democracy should be alarmed about.

Jamal is the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and Nineham is vice chairman of the Stop the War Coalition. The two leaders were found guilty on April 1 of breaching protest guidelines during a January 18, 2025, protest.

“Week after week, they have negotiated with the police to ensure that people could peacefully and safely exercise their democratic right to protest,” the joint statement reads.

Jamal and Nineham had organized a demonstration in which protesters planned to lay flowers on BBC property, situated behind two police lines. If permission to enter the property was denied, organizers had planned to instead lay flowers at the feet of police comprising the first barricade. Video footage reportedly showed police allowing demonstrators past the first line. Before reaching the second line, police arrested Nineham and blocked further passage. Jamal then instructed demonstrators to lay the flowers where there were and return to their original location outside police lines.

District Judge Daniel Sternberg delivered the judgment, emphasizing how “protest rights, while fundamental, are not absolute.” Nineham and Jamal both responded to the verdict, with the former stating:

This is clearly part of an ongoing criminalisation of the Palestine movement in which people protesting against a genocide are being targeted by a British establishment…and an attempt to send a chilling message across society that people shouldn’t risk protesting – it is an attempt that will not stop us. This case should never have been brought because numerous [videos] of the day show that the police had ushered us in through their lines.

The Metropolitan Police also issued a response statement, expressing a desire for the decision to send a message of the “importance of cooperating with officers and complying with the lawful decisions they make.”

UK police are granted significant powers under the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and the 2023 Public Order Act. The Crime and Policing Bill currently before Parliament would further expand police powers. Rights groups have warned these laws fail to uphold the UK’s international rights obligations.

Jamal and Nineham were sentenced to 18 and 12 months conditional discharge, respectively, and ordered to pay ￡7,500 in prosecution costs. No charges were brought against other demonstrators, among which included a Holocaust survivor.

The statement was co-signed by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, LIBERTY, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Big Brother Watch, English Pen, and Article 19.