UK accused of undermining democratic rights with climate protest crackdown
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British director of Human Rights Watch attacks ‘dangerous hypocrisy’ of government. Britain’s crackdown on climate protest is setting “a dangerous precedent” around the world and undermining democratic rights, the UK director of Human Rights Watch has said.
Yasmine Ahmed accused the Labour government of hypocrisy over its claims to be committed to human rights and international law. Ahmed said: “We’re at a stage where we’re talking about the … dangerous hypocrisy of what the UK government is saying and doing, and also the fact that the international community and the UN have [raised] and continue to raise the alarm about how this UK government responds to protest, and in particular, climate protest.”.
In the UK “laws criminalising protests undermine democratic rights”, the NGO says in its latest annual world report, published on Thursday, adding that in the past year “the UK continued to crack down on and criminalise climate protests”. New powers granted to police by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 have had the effect of undermining “free speech, peaceful assembly, and democratic rights in the UK”, the report says.
The cumulative effect of the laws, which newly criminalised or introduced harsher penalties for a range of protest tactics, as well as giving police greater discretion about when they can intervene in protest, has made taking part in climate activism increasingly risky, with the effect that fewer people are willing to risk the legal consequences.
