Human rights experts and campaigners have warned against an intensifying crackdown on climate protests across Europe, as Guardian research found countries across the continent using repressive measures to silence activists.
In Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK, authorities have responded to climate protests with mass arrests, the passing of draconian new laws, the imposing of severe sentences for non-violent protests and the labelling of activists as hooligans, saboteurs or eco-terrorists.
The crackdowns have come in spite of calls by senior human rights advocates and environmental campaigners to allow civic space for the right to non-violent protest, after a summer of record-breaking heat in southern Europe that is attributed to the effects of climate breakdown.
The UK has led the way in the crackdown, experts say, with judges recently refusing an appeal against multi-year sentences for climate activists who blocked a motorway bridge in east London. The three-year jail terms for Marcus Decker and Morgan Trowland earlier this year are thought to be the longest handed out by a British judge for non-violent protest.
The ruling came as protesters in the UK try to navigate a new legal environment that includes significant limits on the right to protest, including two wide-ranging new laws passed in the past two years giving police the discretion to ban protests regarded as “disruptive” and criminalising a host of protest tactics.
Michel Forst, the UN rapporteur on environmental defenders since June last year, described the situation in the UK as “terrifying”. He added that other countries were “looking at the UK examples with a view to passing similar laws in their own countries, which will have a devastating effect for Europe”.
“Since my appointment I have been travelling to many countries in Europe and there is a clear trend,” Forst told the Guardian. “We can see an increasing number of cases by which these climate activists are brought to court more and more often and more and more severe laws being passed to facilitate these attacks on defenders.”
He added: “I’m sure that there is European cooperation among the police forces against these kinds of activities. My concern is that when [governments] are calling these people eco-terrorists, or are using new forms of vilifications and defamation it has a huge impact on how the population may perceive them and the cause for which these people are fighting. It is a huge concern for me.”
Amnesty International said it was investigating a continent-wide crackdown on protest. Catrinel Motoc, the organisation’s senior campaigner on civil space and right to protest in Europe, said: “People all around the world are bravely raising their voices to call for urgent actions on the climate crisis but many face dire consequences for their peaceful activism.
“Peaceful protesters are left with no choice but to stage public protests and non-violent direct actions because European countries are not doing enough to tackle the climate crisis.
“There’s alarming evidence of criminalisation, harassment, stigmatisation and negative rhetoric towards environmental defenders.”
Motoc said that instead of demonising and restricting peaceful environmental defenders, “European governments should put [their] energy into open dialogue with activists and organisations to fix the problems of climate crisis. Climate protesters are not a nuisance, and they should not be silenced or crushed.”
In June, Dunja Mijatović, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, also called for an end to crackdowns on environmental activists. Last December, Volker Türk, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, appealed to governments to protect the “civic space” for young environmental activists, and “not crack down in a way that we have seen in many parts of the world”.
Source: The Guardian
