Last week, record prison sentences were handed down to five British climate activists for organizing a multi-day protest on the M25, the motorway that goes around London. Four of them received sentences of four years each. The fifth, Roger Hallam, got a five-year sentence. These sentences are an alarming escalation in the criminalization of climate protests, in the UK and beyond.
The sentences are a direct consequence of a range of anti-protest legislation passed by the previous Conservative government that has been heavily criticized by human rights groups, the United Nations, and climate scientists. Some of these new laws are still being contested in UK courts by the human rights nongovernmental organization Liberty. The new laws have focused on policing, sentencing, and the ability of juries to find defendants not guilty.
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** Image Credit – Just Stop Oil activists protesting near Trafalgar Square on Saturday, May 20, 2023. (Alisdare Hickson/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.0)
