MINISTERS should be in the dock for supporting genocide, rather than peaceful protesters taking non-violent direct action, Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths has insisted.

He was responding to the arrest and detention of 72 people in London, Cardiff, Manchester and Leeds last weekend for opposing the banning of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

“Spraying paint on a fighter aircraft used to assist Israeli mass murder in Gaza is not an act of terrorism by any reasonable definition of the word,” Mr Griffiths told the party’s political committee on Tuesday evening.

“Nor does peacefully sitting or marching in solidarity with Palestine Action and the Palestinian people turn someone into a supporter of terrorism.”

The Communist Party leader declared it an “outrageous breach of our hard-won democratic freedoms” that protesters, some in their eighties, had then been held in cells for up to 36 hours after being arrested.

Mr Griffiths also accused government ministers of being more concerned about the BBC livestreaming chants from the Glastonbury Festival than about the ongoing atrocities in occupied Palestine.

The party’s political committee expressed its solidarity with Ben Jamal of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Stop the War Coalition’s Chris Nineham, who are due to go trial in February next year for alleged public order offences relating to a mass demonstration for Palestine that took place in London on January 18.

Britain’s communists also joined 22 trade union leaders in condemning new charges against trade union activist Alex Kenny and CND general secretary Sophie Bolt for their participation in that protest.

Mr Griffiths added: “British government ministers should be in the dock instead, accused of collaborating in genocide and authorising police attempts to sabotage peaceful marches in solidarity with its victims.”