AFour members of the group were sentenced to four years in prison by a British judge on charges of conspiracy to organize a highway blockade.
The group’s founder, Roger Hallam, was jailed for five years for orchestrating the operation on London’s Ring Road M25 motorway.
His sentence is considered the heaviest sentence ever handed down to a non-violent protester in the UK, and is part of a growing unrest among these activists.
Michael Forst, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Environmental Defenders, opined, “This is a dark day for peaceful protesters in favor of the environment and for all those concerned about exercising their fundamental freedoms.”
“This sentence should shock every citizen. It should alarm us all about the state of civil liberties and liberties in the United Kingdom,” he pointed out in a statement.
During a Zoom meeting in November 2022, these activists agreed to organize a demonstration to disrupt traffic on the M25.
Dozens of people participated in the activity, climbing the gantries above the road axis for four consecutive days. The police had to stop the traffic.
Sociologist Graeme Hayes, who works on environmental policies and social movements, said in a statement to AFP that the fines were “clearly excessive and disproportionate”.
But, in his view, they are “a logical consequence of the authoritarian slide seen in the UK over the past five years”.
The sentences for conspiracy to cause a disturbance in a public place are the result of legislation introduced in 2022 that raised the maximum sentence for this type of offense by 10 years.
According to Graeme Hayes, who teaches at Aston University in Birmingham, the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales has been much tougher on these protesters in recent years.
While not interfering with court decisions, the sociologist opined that the previous conservative government “signaled what it expected from the courts through the new law and the powers granted to the Public Prosecutor’s Office”.
The UN had already criticized two Just Stop Oil activists who were sentenced to two and three years in prison for climbing onto the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge over the River Thames in April 2023.
After the announcement of the court ruling, Just Stop Oil called for the suspension of all new licenses and authorizations for oil and gas, which it condemned as an “obscene perversion of justice”.
Amy Cameron, director of Greenpeace UK, declared that the fines were part of a “judicial crackdown on climate defenders” which she considers “out of control”.
As for activists, Graeme Hayes reinforces, “Given the potential consequences of their actions, it becomes more difficult to prove it.”
But he acknowledged that some “may, however, decide to take more disruptive measures as a form of protest against this law.”
Also Read: Effective jail sentence for five Just Stop Oil protesters
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