LONDON (Reuters) -British street artist Banksy has painted a mural on London’s High Court depicting a judge beating a protester, possibly in reaction to the arrest of hundreds of demonstrators supporting banned group Palestine Action.<\/p>\n
The artist, whose identity has never been confirmed, published pictures of the artwork on his Instagram page on Monday.<\/p>\n
The stencilled mural shows a bewigged judge using a gavel to hit a protester holding a blood-splattered placard who has been knocked to the ground.<\/p>\n
It was painted after almost 900 people were arrested at a demonstration in London on Saturday against Palestine Action’s ban. That followed hundreds of other arrests of the group’s supporters in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
Britain banned, or proscribed, Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation in July, making it a crime to belong to or support the group, after some of its members broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged military planes.<\/p>\n
Britain’s criminal and judicial system has come under attack from both sides of the political spectrum, with critics saying the right to peaceful protest is under threat.<\/p>\n
Although Banksy never comments on his artwork, he has created previous work in support of Palestinian causes, including murals on the West Bank separation barrier, concentrated around Bethlehem.<\/p>\n
London’s Royal Courts of Justice, which houses the High Court, is a Grade One-listed building, meaning it has the highest level of historical significance and protection. Photos on Monday showed barriers had already been installed around the artwork.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Sachin Ravikumar)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (Reuters) -British street artist Banksy has painted a mural on London’s High Court depicting a judge beating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[15791,748,393,4884,257,140473,29597,83400,119755,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-407849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-banksy","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-londons-high-court","14":"tag-mural","15":"tag-palestine-action","16":"tag-protester","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115168794633497728","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}