Convictions of Just Stop Oil activists and Wet’suwet’en land defenders suggest “an international pattern to criminalize”
The BBC reports: “Five [Just Stop Oil] environmental activists who organized protests that brought part of the M25 [motorway] to a standstill over four days [in November 2022] have been jailed. …[Roger] Hallam was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment while the other defendants each received four-year jail terms.”
Michel Forst, the United Nations Special Special Rapporteur on environmental defenders, who attended part of the trial last week, states: “This sentence should shock the conscience of any member of the public. …Rulings like today’s set a very dangerous precedent, not just for environmental protest but any form of peaceful protest that may, at one point or another, not align with the interests of the government of the day.”
The international non-governmental organization Global Witness has also commented: “Until now, most of our attention has focused on people speaking up against powerful interests in Global South countries, where a defender is killed every other day for protecting their land and environment. …Now, the UK is becoming one of the most dangerous countries in the western world to speak up in defence of our planet.”
“Striking similarities” between the UK, Canada
Just nine months ago, on October 12, 2023, The Guardian reported: “[While] scientific experts are unanimous that there needs to be an urgent clampdown on fossil fuel production … many governments … seem to have different priorities [including] launching a fierce crackdown on people trying to peacefully raise the alarm.”
Significantly, that article by Nina Lakhani, Damien Gayle and Matthew Taylor highlights: “The Guardian has also found striking similarities in the way governments from Canada and the US to Guatemala and Chile, from India and Tanzania to the UK, Europe and Australia, are cracking down on activists trying to protect the planet.”
While Canada has not yet seen the use of legislation to criminalize peaceful protest the way the Public Order Act 2023 and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2022 have been used in the UK, other legal instruments have been used.
Injunctions and the RCMP C-IRG
Following his January 2024 visit to the United Kingdom, UN Special Rapporteur Forst commented: “I am deeply troubled at the use of civil injunctions to ban protest in certain areas, including on public roadways.”
In March 2020, the Canadian Press reported Irina Ceric, now an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Windsor, saying the use of injunctions to dispel protests has been on the rise in Canada.
Ceric expressed concern that injunctions give “corporations that are impacted by blockades the power to call the shots in terms of protest policing, which I think is really problematic.” This is particularly the case with Indigenous-led blockades against extractive projects on their sovereign territories within Canada.
One example is the injunction related to the Calgary-based TC Energy Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline.
On December 14, 2018, the British Columbia Supreme Court granted Coastal GasLink an interim injunction to prevent land defenders from blockading/disrupting the construction of the pipeline that was at that time being built without free, prior and informed consent on Wet’suwet’en territory in northern British Columbia.
West Coast Environmental Law (WECL) has observed: “This type of injunction is common in resource disputes – the company sues a few of the protesters and then asks the court for a court order to ‘preserve their legal rights’ until the matter can go to trial. Usually the original lawsuit doesn’t go to trial – because by that time the project is built. The company really just wants the injunction.”
On January 7, 2019, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) enforced that interim injunction with a heavily-armed, militarized raid on Wet’suwet’en territory.
By December 2019, BC Supreme Court Judge Marguerite Church granted Coastal GasLink’s application for an interlocutory injunction. That injunction was enforced by the RCMP C-IRG in two raids on February 6-10, 2020, and November 18-19, 2021.
A total of 74 people, including land defenders and media, were arrested in those three RCMP raids on Wet’suwet’en territory.
Furthermore, in January 2024, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Tammen found three Indigenous land defenders guilty of criminal contempt of court for breaking the injunction against impeding construction of the pipeline.
While they face the possibility of imprisonment and/or a fine for criminal contempt, their sentencing has been delayed pending an abuse of process hearing against the RCMP that will continue this coming September 3-11.
The United States
On February 20, 2021, HuffPost reported: “Under a new bill in the Minnesota legislature, [environmental activists] could face much steeper consequences [holding] virtually anyone even remotely involved [in a protest] — especially those caught trespassing — liable for the damage, threatening protesters with up to 10 years in prison and $20,000 in fines.”
That article adds: “Minnesota’s bill is tougher than similar legislation proposed in other states, but it’s not unique. The legislation follows a model that’s been approved in 14 states and is also under consideration in Arkansas, Montana, and Kansas. The model designates ― if it isn’t already so ― any oil, gas, coal, or plastics facilities as ‘critical infrastructure’ and adds aggressive new penalties for vague charges of trespassing or tampering.”
Further reading: Ojibwe water protector Tara Houska shot with rubber bullets paid for by Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. (August 3, 2021).
“An international pattern to criminalize”
While there are differences between the Just Stop Oil protests in the UK and Wet’suwet’en resistance on their territory in Canada, there may be a connecting link.
Shin Imai, an emeritus professor at the Osgoode Hall law school in Toronto, has commented: “There is very clearly an international pattern to criminalize communities in which the nexus between corporations and governments is very important …fossil fuel companies need the state to criminalize defenders.”
Professor Imai, who is also the director of the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project, a community-based legal clinic, adds: “[Corporations] also often rely on their own government to use diplomatic influence to pressure the host state to deploy troops, pass laws, arrest activists and deny bail. Across the world, the legal goal posts are being changed to make criminalizing climate and environmental defenders easier in a way that violates fundamental rights and the spirit of the rule of law.”
As Lakhani, Gayle and Taylor highlight in The Guardian: “In other words, Shin said, acts of violence, online attacks, threats and other intimidatory tactics could be carried out against activists without state involvement, but criminalisation required lawmakers, prosecutors, police and courts to be involved – the same people and agencies we need to tackle the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.”
Watching Guatemala
As mentioned above, The Guardian article from October 2023 notes “striking similarities” in Canada, the UK and other parts of the world notably Guatemala.
While international attention has been given to the criminalization of Indigenous peoples in Guatemala resisting mining and hydroelectric dam megaprojects, less attention has been given to fossil fuel projects there.
In April 2024, BNAmericas reported that Perenco, Guatemala’s primary oil producer, whose refinery licences are set to expire in August 2025, is now in talks with the Arevalo government to stay beyond that time.
President Bernardo Arévalo has commented: “The Xan well that is in a protected area can no longer continue operating because it would be a violation of the existing legislation, but we expect Perenco will continue to carry out exploration and production in other areas of the country where there are no environmental protection limits.”
Mongabay has also noted that Perenco, a London, UK-headquartered oil and gas company, currently produces between 5,000 and 7,000 barrels of crude oil a day from its Xan field, or around 90% of national output.
We continue to follow this.
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