Andreas Malm says the UK Home Office cancelled his Electronic Travel Authorisation on Wednesday, blocking his planned trip to the United Kingdom a week before he was due to appear on a Tribune panel in London. The email said his “presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good.”
He said he had been going regularly to the United Kingdom for decades and used an ETA to visit in May. Malm said he received no warning before the Wednesday email, and the Home Office told him that if he wants to visit the UK, he needs to apply for a visa.
London panel with Tribune
The London panel was organised by Tribune and was set for next week. Huda Ammori, the cofounder of Palestine Action, was also due to appear, and Hala Hanina of Palestine Deep Dive was due to chair the discussion.
Malm said to Al Jazeera, “I haven’t said anything in public about Palestine during these intervening months or written anything about it. The only thing that could have caused this [latest UK decision] is that I was due to be on a panel on Wednesday evening, where I would talk to Huda Ammori of Palestine Action.”
UK visa process and timing
The Home Office’s decision leaves Malm with a narrower route back into the UK: a visa application. The UK government website says a standard visitor visa takes three weeks to process, which puts any return trip on a tighter timetable than the cancelled ETA.
That timing matters because the panel date was already close when the email arrived on Wednesday. Malm’s account puts the cancellation inside a short window, after he had already planned to travel and after the event had been arranged around his appearance.
Palestine Action and wider pressure
The cancellation comes amid a wider crackdown on pro-Palestine activists by the UK government. Last year, Palestine Action was proscribed under UK law as a terrorist organisation and placed on the same legal list as al-Qaeda and ISIL.
Oliver Eagleton, who commented to Al Jazeera, said: “Andy Burnham’s government continues the authoritarian overreach we saw under Starmer. In this new dystopian Britain, it is now commonplace for authors and academics to be treated as terrorists because they support Palestinians facing genocide and the rights of people protesting that genocide.”
Al Jazeera contacted the Home Office for clarification on the cancellation of Malm’s ETA, and the Home Office had not replied at the time of publication. Malm is now left waiting on whether a visa application can clear the path to London before the panel goes ahead.
