Extinction Rebellion protest ban unlawful – court
A POLICE ban on protests in London by climate activists Extinction Rebellion is unlawful, a British court ruled yesterday.
London’s metropolitan police declared all protests by the group were unlawful from October 14, after earlier imposing restrictions on protesters following several days of disruption.
Two high court judges ruled that the police were not entitled to impose a blanket ban on “public assembly” and could only ban protests at specific locations.
“It vindicates our belief that the police’s blanket ban on our protests was an unprecedented and unlawful infringement on the right to protest,” said Tobias Garnett, a lawyer for Extinction Rebellion, or XR.
“Rather than wasting its time and money seeking to silence and criminalise those who are drawing its attention to the climate and ecological emergency, we call on the government to act now on the biggest threat to our planet,” Garnett said.
The metropolitan police said they were “disappointed… (but) will respect the decision of the court.”
“We will now carefully consider the judgment before deciding on our next steps,” the police said.
Co-plaintiff Jenny Jones, a Green Party member of the Lords, parliament’s unelected upper house, tweeted that the ruling was “fantastic news”.
“Peaceful protest is a fundamental right in a democracy & must not be arbitrarily shut down,” tweeted Caroline Lucas, the sole Green Party member of parliament’s main house, the Commons.
Extinction Rebellion UK said it was considering suing the police following the ruling.
Kate Allen, the UK director of Amnesty International, said the court ruling confirmed that the ban was “a complete overstep”.
“The sweeping, ill-defined and capital-wide ban sent the chilling message that basic freedoms in this country can be set aside when the authorities choose to do so,” Allen said in a statement.
Another rights group, Liberty UK, said the ruling would “help safeguard future protests”, while Big Brother Watch called for the Metropolitan Police commissioner to be “held to account” after the police “unlawfully abused their power”.
Shami Chakrabarti, the opposition Labour party’s shadow attorney general, also welcomed the court’s ruling against “such a disproportionate and blanket ban”.
The police reported nearly 1 828 arrests of protesters in London, mainly for obstruction, illegal assembly and public order offences, in the first half of October.
They said 165 people had been charged by yesterday.
Assistant Commissioner Nick Ephgrave defended the police decision to ban the protests.
“After more than a week of serious disruption in London both to communities and across our partner agencies, and taking account of the enormous ongoing effort by officers from the Metropolitan Police Service and across the UK to police the protest, we firmly believed that the continuation of the situation was untenable,” Ephgrave said in a statement.