Britain is jailing environmentalists and anti-genocide protesters – NZ must not follow

UK political prisoners are no longer a historical warning or a foreign abstraction. A new report identifies hundreds of climate and Palestine-solidarity protesters imprisoned or held on remand in Britain, while New Zealand is quietly expanding Police powers to record people, gather intelligence and control public spaces.

Where England goes, NZ shall follow…

New breed of political prisoner arises in Britain as anti-protest sentences rise

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More people are being jailed in England and Wales as a result of acting to prevent climate breakdown and the war in Gaza, research reveals

Britain has created a new breed of political prisoners through the systematic incarceration of people acting to prevent climate breakdown and the annihilation of Gaza, a report claims.

The research by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and the protest group Defend Our Juries says that custodial sentences for acts of direct action or civil disobedience were once rare but are now being imposed with increasing length and frequency.

Their report, which will be launched on Tuesday, points to an increase in anti-protest legislation in England and Wales, police powers and civil law injunctions brought by corporations and public bodies as well as judges removing legal defences and “exceptionally long” sentences.

In what they say is the first analysis of the jailing of “Britain’s new political prisoners”, the researchers identified 286 cases involving climate and Palestine-solidarity activists who were sent to prison for protest for a total amount of jail time of 136 years.

The average detention period in the 256 cases for which data was available was 28 weeks, with one in three protesters jailed for six months or more and one in five for more than a year.

David Whyte, the report’s co-author and professor of climate justice at QMUL, said: “These are exceptional sentences that are being used to apply to protests which are themselves profoundly political.

“So it’s clear that extreme sentences and the level of remand detentions [before trial] at an extreme level are being used to respond to one category of prisoners and that’s prisoners who’ve been detained because they’ve been involved in civil disobedience, direct action as a result of political protest. So there is something going on which is profoundly political. Very often those protesters are reflecting majority rather than a minority view.”

The Guardian

Now New Zealand is handing Police more protest powers

We are seeing these exact tactics by the State to criminalise legitimate protest lining up in NZ.

Civil liberties advocates are warning the Government’s new Policing Amendment Bill could dramatically expand police surveillance and protest powers with alarmingly little public scrutiny — raising fears New Zealand is sleepwalking into a far more authoritarian policing model.

Expanded Police intelligence-gathering powers, and the right to declare an area off-limits before fining and arresting people who refuse to leave?

Law Society worried Policing Amendment Bill could lead to clampdown on political protest

The Law Society here is worried the Policing Amendment Bill which is making its way through Parliament with strong police backing will clamp down on political protest.

“It’s a clear parallel,” said Timothy Roberts, president of the New South Wales Council of Civil Liberties.

There is evidence behind the concern – the Independent Police Conduct Authority last year found police exhibited a lot of uncertainty and inconsistency about the limits of lawful protest and what the restrictions should be, and called for explicit laws to protect protesters’ rights.

The New Zealand bill was hurriedly drafted without public consultation.

The bill’s first part would expand police intelligence-gathering powers; its second part would expand their powers to declare areas off-limits ahead of time in case of imminent public disorder. It would extend the power beyond roads to many public places, and add an instant $1,000 infringement fee for someone who entered or did not leave a zone, plus adding a new offence of failing to give police identifying details.

RNZ

…I am deeply suspicious of any increase to the already enormous intelligence powers they have and giving them the discretion to decide when a protest is illegal is an enormous curtailing of democratic rights.

This has been rushed through with very little scrutiny while massively expanding Police powers.

This isn’t how you make good law, this is how you abuse it.