LOCAL supporters of the Defend Our Juries Campaign are once again set to hold a demonstration in Reading this week.
On Saturday, January 25, supporters will be campaigning to publicise a mass appeal in London by imprisoned peaceful protesters and explain their concerns about the erosion of our democratic right to protest.
It comes ahead of action by Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace UK, who will be supporting the sentencing appeal of five climate protesters jailed for up to five years–seeking to overturn their sentences– at the Royal Courts of Justice on January 29 and 30.
The court has listed the appeal to be heard as part of a wider joint hearing, which will review four separate cases involving Just Stop Oil activists, in which a total of sixteen people have been sentenced for a combined forty-one years over peaceful protest.
Defend Our Juries and the Free Political Prisoners campaign are calling on concerned groups and individuals to join them at the Courts at the appeal of these sixteen political prisoners, whose sentences sparked international outrage and criticism from the United Nations over breaches of human rights.
The jail terms handed down by Southwark Crown Court of up to five years are the longest for any peaceful protest-related offences on record. Until recently, it was virtually unheard of for peaceful protest to result in jail time.
Local supporters of the political prisoners will be holding a display in Broad Street to inform people of what they call an “insidious clampdown” on the right to protest, as well as the rights of juries to hear the motivation for the actions taken by defendants and the testimony of expert witnesses.
Defend Our Juries argues the current situation is making political prisoners of anyone demonstrating or peacefully drawing attention to issues that need to be highlighted, which it described as “senseless” amid prisons facing under-staffing and overcrowding.
Katie de Kauwe, senior lawyer at Friends of the Earth, said: “In what functioning democracy can it be right for those peacefully raising the alarm about the climate crisis to receive longer jail sentences than people who participated in racially-motivated violence this summer, and deliberately targeted migrants, refugees and Muslim communities? Peaceful protesters shouldn’t be locked up, period.”
Jack Robirosa, legal counsel for Greenpeace UK, said: “The last government’s draconian laws have led to a situation where conscientious people are getting five years in prison for discussing a planned peaceful protest.
“This is not the sort of thing most people associate with an established democracy with respect for civil rights and a healthy culture of protest and free speech.
Lucy Harding, one of the demonstrators, said: “We want this peaceful event to draw attention to the mass appeal at the Royal courts of Justice on January 29/30 by 16 people who have been imprisoned for their climate crisis actions.
“Defend Our Juries is concerned that basic rights, freedom of speech, assembly and even trial by jury, a legal right laid down in Magna Carta 1215, 810 years ago, are threatened by the two Acts brought in by the previous administration–this affects everyone.’
The peaceful event in Broad Street, Reading will take place from 11am-1pm on Saturday 25th January.
