Swedish academic says UK barred him over event with Palestine Action co-founder

Andreas Malm, a Swedish climate academic, says he has been barred from entering the UK ahead of a scheduled appearance on a panel with a co-founder of Palestine Action, which is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK. Malm told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he had received a letter from the Home Office notifying him that his presence was "not conducive to the public good", with no further details given. He said he could not "see any other explanation" for the decision than his scheduled talk in London with Huda Ammori, organised by the left-wing magazine Tribune. The Home Office declined to comment on the case. Malm is a senior lecturer in human ecology at Sweden's Lund University. His published work includes the 2021 book How to Blow up a Pipeline and, from 2025, The Destruction of Palestine is the Destruction of the Earth. He said he had asked the Home Office to explain its decision but could not identify a reason beyond the upcoming event, describing the ban as a "severe restriction on the free exchange of ideas". Malm said he was not a member of Palestine Action, had never publicly endorsed the group and had given it no financial support. "The only link to Palestine Action is her as a person," he said, criticising the government for ascribing "guilt by association". The academic acknowledged that he had previously described the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023 on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage, as "fundamentally an act of liberation". He said it was possible those remarks, made during a December 2023 talk in which he also condemned the "deplorable" killing of civilians in the cross-border attack, had been the reason for the Home Office's decision. But he argued that the views had been in the public realm for a long time, including when he was last allowed into the UK to deliver a talk in May. "I don't expect the British state to agree with me on Palestine or climate or anything. What I expect the British state to do is to continue to let me enter the country and to discuss with colleagues, with people who disagree with me, as I have done for years," he said. The ban comes amid a wider legal and political dispute over Palestine Action. The UK Supreme Court is due to review the group's controversial proscription under terrorism legislation, and the Home Office has said it will robustly defend against the appeal. More than 3,700 people are believed to have been arrested in the UK over alleged support for the group, and about 2,500 have been charged, though none have yet gone to trial while the legal challenge continues. Separately, the author Sally Rooney withdrew her books from UK publication over Palestine Action support. The government has broad discretion to bar foreign nationals from entering the UK if their presence is deemed to pose a risk to society. In April, 11 people described by then-Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer as "far-right agitators" were banned ahead of a rally led by Tommy Robinson. Kanye West was denied entry the same month after backlash to his planned set at London's Wireless Festival, which followed a string of antisemitic, racist and pro-Nazi comments. He had previously apologised for the remarks and said his bipolar disorder had caused him to lose "touch with reality". In June, left-wing political commentators Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur claimed their visas had been revoked ahead of planned appearances in London and Oxford, allegedly for criticising Israel.