Riccardo Liguori A study by Climate Rights International denounces the repression of citizens who publicly call for urgent climate action and asks us a question: are arrests and prison sentences threatening the right to peaceful protest, essential to tackling the climate crisis?
@Fossil Free London
A new report, “On Thin Ice“, from Climate Rights International, flags one disturbing trend: wealthy, democratic countries in the Global North-known more for preaching to other nations in relation to human rights issues on the international stage-have resorted to stringent measures to contain and suppress citizen protests regarding the climate crisis.
From preaching to repression
The report points to increasingly severe treatment of climate activists in Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Lengthy prison sentences, preventive detention, and new stringent laws are choking the basic right to peaceful protest, which underpins forcing governments to take action on the climate crisis.
The organisation writes, “The hypocrisy of such governments could not be more evident”, considering that these countries loudly raise a hue and cry over human rights violations and suppression of dissent in developing nations, yet they themselves resorted to similar tactics when protests in their own countries began to challenge the status quo and their economic interests clearly linked with fossil fuels. It gives the example of discrepancies in this regard: for one, the UK government speaks volumes on the right to protest internationally while cracking down on environmental demonstrations within its own borders.
The criminalisation of protest
This often means that climate activists are branded as hooligans, saboteurs, and even eco-terrorists, a dangerous narrative which legitimates repression and has repercussions on the validity of their arguments. The profound motives-the care for the future of the planet and generations to come-which make those individuals take to protesting are also abandoned and silenced. The Climate Rights International report underlines how such criminalization of protest is taking place in many countries, following convictions for activists engaged in non-violent actions.
“You don’t have to agree with the tactics of climate activists to understand the importance of defending their rights to protest and free speech,” says Brad Adams, director of Climate Rights International. “Rather than jailing climate protesters and undermining civil liberties, governments should heed their call for urgent action on the climate crisis.”
A cry for help ignored
These defenders are basically trying to protect the planet, and in doing so, they protect humanity,” said Mary Lawlor, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. “These are people we should be protecting, but they are seen by governments and corporations as a threat to be neutralized.
History has demonstrated that protest has been fundamental in acquiring key social and political reforms, from civil rights to universal suffrage.
“Taking away the right to protest takes away the possibility of democratic and peaceful change,” say Trevor Stankiewicz, a legal researcher at Climate Rights International, and Linda Lakhdhir, the organization’s legal director, co-authors of the report.
The climate crisis will not wait, and time is running out. Freedom of expression and the right to protest are indispensable tools for securing a sustainable and just future for all. Silencing activists isn’t part of the solution.
