British NGOs and activists are concerned about the decline in freedom to protest after the harsh prison sentences handed down on Thursday to environmental activists from the Just Stop Oil organisation for organising a motorway blockade.
Accused of conspiracy, four members of this group were sentenced to four years in prison by the British courts. And its founder, Roger Hallam, was sentenced to five years for having prepared this action on the M25 motorway around London.
His sentence is believed to be the longest ever handed down to a non-violent protester in the UK and comes amid growing concern among such activists.
Michel Forst, the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, said it was a “dark day for peaceful environmental protests and for all those concerned about exercising their fundamental freedoms.”
“This conviction should shock any citizen. It should put us all on alert about the state of civil rights and freedoms in the UK,” he said in a statement.
During a Zoom meeting in November 2022, these activists agreed to organise a protest to disrupt traffic on the M25 motorway.
Dozens of people then took part in the action by climbing onto gantries above the road for four consecutive days. The police had to stop traffic.
Sociologist Graeme Hayes, a specialist in environmental policies and social movements, told AFP that these sentences were “clearly excessive and disproportionate.”
However, he said, they constitute “the logical outcome of the authoritarian turn that Britain has observed over the last five years.”
The sentences for conspiracy to cause public nuisance stem from legislation introduced in 2022 that increased the maximum sentence for that charge to ten years in prison.
” Out of control “
In May 2023, another Public Order Act passed days before the coronation of King Charles III created new offences and strengthened police powers to search protesters suspected of causing “serious disturbance”.
According to Graeme Hayes, who teaches at Aston University in Birmingham, the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales has become tougher on protesters in recent years.
Although it does not intervene in court decisions, the previous conservative government “has signalled, through its new legislation and the powers granted to the prosecutor’s office, what it expects from the courts,” the sociologist believes.
“Each of you crossed the line some time ago from concerned activist to fanatic,” Judge Christopher Hehir said Thursday in delivering his judgment.
The United Nations had previously criticised the sentencing of two Just Stop Oil activists to two and three years in prison for scaling the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge over the Thames in east London in April 2023.
When the decision was announced, Just Stop Oil, which is calling on the government to suspend all new oil and gas licences and authorisations, denounced “an obscene perversion of justice”.
Amy Cameron, director of Greenpeace UK, said the sentences were part of a “judicial crackdown on climate activists” that she said was “out of control”.
“These convictions are not a one-off anomaly, but the culmination of years of repressive laws, exaggerated government rhetoric, and a concerted attack on the right of jurors to deliberate according to their conscience,” she added.
For activists, “it has become much more difficult to protest given the potential consequences of their actions,” Graeme Hayes added.
“However, some may decide to take more disruptive action, as a form of resistance to this law,” he said.