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British trip-hop group Massive Attack faced a police investigation and entry bans on two of its members last week after they raised a Palestinian flag on stage during a concert in Singapore to chants of “Free Palestine” from the crowd.

In an Instagram post on Sunday, the group said they were “detained by the police, isolated and separately questioned” with some of their members even being “subjected to hotel room searches and temporary passport confiscation”.

The band said their audience had been chanting “Free Palestine” from before they even stepped on stage and continued to do so at the end of the show. They said the fans were “presumably aware but undeterred” by the government’s strict censorship laws.

Massive Attack said they “did not imagine that merely holding up the flag of a sovereign state recognised by 157 countries (Palestine) would violate any law”.

Nonetheless, the group said they were “proud” to have expressed solidarity with Palestine alongside their fans in Singapore “who clearly felt a moral imperative” to do so as Palestinians lived through a “reality of illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide”.

Massive Attack called their experience “surreal” and said it underscored “defending universal human rights and freedom of expression, wherever those rights are threatened”.

That, in the group’s words, included the UK, “where, extraordinarily, we still see protesters arrested under terrorism laws for holding up handwritten signs protesting genocide”.

The group thanked the people of Singapore for welcoming them into their country and hoped the government will “allow their citizens expressions of conscience without fear of state persecution”.

“As we were saying… Free Palestine,” the group wrote at the end of their message.

Singapore bans the display of foreign flags and emblems without permits and the unpermitted display of a foreign flag is punishable with a fine of up to 500 Singapore dollars ($389), a maximum prison term of six months, or both.

Authorities said the band were investigated for their “actions of support for a political cause and unfurling of a foreign flag” during their concert and will no longer be allowed to perform in Singapore.

“The police take a serious view of acts which could potentially harm the racial and religious harmony in Singapore and urge the public, including foreigners, to refrain from importing foreign politics as this can undermine our social cohesion and the rule of law,” the police and media authority said in a joint statement.

Massive Attack, meanwhile, have a long history of support for “foreign politics”, speaking up on wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. The band’s frontman, Robert Del Naja, was even arrested in London in April for protesting in support of Palestine Action, an activist group banned by British authorities.

Cover photo: Simran Panaech via Reuters