There’s a disaster in our prisons. Keir Starmer says it’s “shocking”. Our jails are so full, police chiefs are warning it could quickly be unimaginable to take care of even probably the most fundamental legislation and order. So right here’s a radical proposal. Let’s cease locking up our fact tellers. The people who find themselves shouting “fire” as a result of there’s a fireplace. After they see we’re not transferring quick sufficient and that the flames are getting increased, they know their accountability is to shout out the message louder. As a result of they care. You most likely know who we imply.
These folks is likely to be annoying. They may provide you with an earache. We’d want they might tone it down. However in a democratic society, they don’t belong in jail. We have to be listening to them, not locking them up.
And we’re not simply speaking right here concerning the brave Complete Reality 5 (WTF), the Simply Cease Oil protesters who had been jailed yesterday for 21 years between them, every locked up for longer than some persons are for committing severe sexual assaults. Individuals who took direct motion to attempt to finish the previous authorities’s insane and lethal coverage of “maxing out” on oil and gasoline reserves.
On simply sooner or later in 2022, 50 folks had been jailed for breaching an injunction obtained by Valero, a US-based oil firm. One in every of them was Dr Sarah Benn, a GP and NHS physician of greater than 30 years, who served the British public on the frontline through the Covid-19 pandemic. Her crime? She held an indication saying “Stop new oil” on injuncted land. One other, Xavier Gonzalez-Trimmer, was a younger man who took peaceable direct motion, in accordance with science, making an attempt to cease the mass lack of life that carbon emissions are inflicting. In between appearances at Inside London crown courtroom, he took his personal life in February 2023. The coroner’s inquest heard proof of the traumatic impression of his time in jail.
In February and March 2023, three folks had been jailed after saying the phrases “climate change” and “fuel poverty” in courtroom, opposite to the choose’s course that they need to not use these phrases. And in April the identical yr, two folks, Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker, had been jailed for 3 years and two years and 7 months respectively, for dropping a banner saying “Just Stop Oil” from the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge on the Dartford crossing, inflicting delays to visitors. Decker, who’s a German nationwide, now faces deportation, though his household life is right here.
Full insanity. It’s a shame and a stain on our nation that our courts have been co-opted to do the fossil gas business’s soiled work.
Firstly of the WTF trial, the UN particular rapporteur on environmental defenders, Michel Forst, had warned that the prospect of a two-year jail sentence was “not only appalling but may also violate the United Kingdom’s obligations under international law”. The choose, Christopher Hehir, was proven the UN assertion. What was his response? To situation four- and five-year sentences. Such apparent contempt for worldwide legislation should not have any place in our courts.
Forst issued one other assertion yesterday, instantly after the decision. “Today marks a dark day for peaceful environmental protest, the protection of environmental defenders and indeed anyone concerned with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms in the United Kingdom,” it learn.
It’s not solely the UN that has spoken out. It’s the scientific neighborhood, too. The choose had banned the defendants from introducing any proof of the local weather disaster into the proceedings. He excluded a witness assertion from one of many main consultants on local weather impacts, Prof Invoice McGuire. McGuire has issued a public assertion that doesn’t pull punches: “The judge’s characterisation of climate breakdown as a ‘matter of opinion and belief’ is completely nonsensical and demonstrates extraordinary ignorance. Similarly, to suggest that the climate emergency is ‘irrelevant’ in relation to whether defendants had a reasonable case for action is crass stupidity.”
One in every of us (Chris) is aware of one of many defendants, Cressie Gethin, personally. Cressie is a superb and fearless younger lady, a music scholar at Cambridge College. It’s insanity to be locking up folks equivalent to Cressie for taking over the may of the fossil gas business. An business that has not simply polluted our land, air and waters, however has corrupted our democracy with its cash and misinformation for therefore lengthy. This can’t go on. What’s taking place is shameful and illegal.
We’ve a brand new authorities, and a brand new lawyer common, Richard Hermer KC, a extremely regarded human rights barrister with a deep respect for worldwide legislation. We suspect he might be as disturbed personally as we’re by the occasions on the crown courtroom yesterday.
That’s the reason we’re calling for an pressing assembly with him, to be recorded so it’s clear to the general public, to debate not simply Cressie’s case, however the jailing of all our fact tellers and their silencing in courtroom.
-
Chris Packham is a naturalist, environmental and animal welfare campaigner, creator and tv presenter on BBC Two’s Springwatch
-
Dale Vince is a inexperienced power industrialist and campaigner and a Labour occasion donor
-
Do you might have an opinion on the problems raised on this article? If you need to submit a response of as much as 300 phrases by e-mail to be thought-about for publication in our letters part, please click on right here.
