An Amnesty International poster campaign aimed at highlighting how the Human Rights Act has helped causes as disparate as the Hillsborough families and the Northern Ireland peace process has been banned by Network Rail as too political, the rights group has said.

Amnesty said on Tuesday it was disappointed that posters booked for rail stations around the country had been pulled, even though Transport for London had run them at an underground station.

Network Rail confirmed it had pulled the posters, saying they did not meet its rules on political advertising, in part because they directed people towards an online petition against government plans to scrap the act.

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The Amnesty campaign, which has also run in print and online, uses people who have been involved in cases involving the Human Rights Act, including relatives of those who died in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, people connected with the Northern Ireland peace process, a couple whose son died because of hospital blunders and a woman who fought to uncover police errors after her mother was murdered.

The government has committed to repealing the act, passed in 1998 under Tony Blair’s government to incorporate the European convention on human rights into UK law. Ministers have pledged to replace it with a bill of rights, though the timetable for this process remains vague.

Amnesty said it had arranged for the cancelled posters to be displayed at other sites.

Kate Allen, Amnesty’s UK director, said: “We’re very disappointed by Network Rail’s decision to pull these adverts at the 11th hour. We simply don’t accept that basic human rights are ever a political issue.

“The irony is that human rights cross party-political lines and so do failures, coverups and abuses. Successive governments managed to let down the Hillsborough families, and their story demonstrates precisely why we need enduring human rights protections which aren’t redrafted by the government of the day, on a political whim.”

A Network Rail spokeswoman said: “We first saw the adverts yesterday and on inspection, they don’t meet our rules on ‘political’ advertising. We aim to be fair and even-handed when deciding which adverts to accept in our stations and have a set of rules in place to ensure all advertising is treated equally.

“The advertisement directs people to sign an online petition, and it is for this reason we deemed it political and against our rules.”

The decision prompted criticism from activists, and people associated with the Amnesty campaign.

Caroline CriadoPerez (@CCriadoPerez) .@nationalrailenq has pulled @AmnestyUK ads. Explaining what the Human Rights Act has done is "too political". Objectifying women is fine.

Barry Devonside, whose 18-year-old son, Christopher, died at Hillsborough, said the decision was small-minded, adding: “Human rights aren’t political; they cover everyone, right across society.”

Introducing the campaign on Tuesday, Becky Shah, whose mother, Inger, also died at Hillsborough, said the act had been crucial in securing the second inquest into the deaths, which recorded that the victims were unlawfully killed.

Under the act, a jury can be convened to assess the wider circumstances surrounding a death – something that had not been legislated for before it came into law.

Shah said: “Without the Human Rights Act we would never, ever have had the second inquest. Without the Human Rights Act we would never, ever have got the verdicts of unlawfully killed against all the parties that were culpable. It was an absolutely imperative piece of legislation.”

Other people involved include Gary McKinnon, who successfully fought extradition to the US on hacking charges, and the parents of John Robinson, who died in 2006 from a ruptured spleen after doctors at Stafford hospital sent him home even though he was vomiting and semi-conscious. It took a second inquest into Robinson’s death in 2014 to uncover the scale of the errors.

“It’s fundamental to everyone, in all walks of life,” Frank Robinson said of the act. “It opens access to justice for the man in the street. From the outset, all we wanted to know was the truth, and we were denied that by an inadequate first inquest. Using the Human Rights Act helped us achieve our goal.”