Composite photo: United Kingdom, Colombia, Canada, Mexico.
UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders Mary Lawlor: “[Criminalization is] about maintaining the power structures in place. This is true regardless of whether it’s a dictatorship, democracy or a corrupt narco-state.”
On March 27, 2025, Metropolitan Police raided the Westminster Quaker meeting house in London and arrested six young women, including a journalist, at a Youth Demand “Welcome Talk” like the virtual forum below that had taken place the day before.
Image: Youth Demand
In response to this police action, Oliver Robertson, head of witness and worship for Quakers in Britain, comments: “This raid is not an isolated incident. It reflects a growing trend of excessive policing under new laws brought in by the previous government, which are now being enforced by the current administration.”
Paul Parker, their recording clerk, also stated: “This aggressive violation of our place of worship and the forceful removal of young people holding a protest group meeting clearly shows what happens when a society criminalises protest.”
Criminalization “the most common tactic”
Mary Lawlor, the Dublin, Ireland-based United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, has further commented: “Criminalisation is the most common tactic used against human rights defenders, because it’s so easy and has such a big impact.”
And Washington, DC-based Global Witness has also noted: “In addition to killings and physical violence, defenders face the growing risk of criminalization – legal methods to harass, threaten, and stop their work – used to silence and prevent them from speaking out.”
Criminalization patterns around the world
Almost two years ago, in October 2023, The Guardian’s environment correspondents Matthew Taylor and Damien Gayle along with senior reporter Nina Lakhani wrote: “The Guardian has 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.”
“States learn from each other”
Photo: Mary Lawlor in Toronto.
That article from 2023 in The Guardian further quoted Lawlor who said: “[Criminalization is] about maintaining the power structures in place. This is true regardless of whether it’s a dictatorship, democracy or a corrupt narco-state, and regardless of the state’s professed commitment to human rights, protecting the environment and combating climate change. What’s clear is that states learn from each other.”
Defenders are adapting to avoid criminalization
Now in 2025, Taylor and Gayle report: “In 2022, MPs [Members of Parliament] passed the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, a direct response to [Extinction Rebellion/ XR’s] mass protests, giving police an armoury of new powers to impose conditions on demonstrations. The following year, in a direct response to the likes of [Just Stop Oil/ JSO], parliament passed the Public Order Act, creating a series of offences targeting direct action, as the government simultaneously lowered the threshold of disruption at which police could intervene in a protest from ‘serious’ to ‘more than minor’.”
They then note: “Some groups, such as Shut the System [STS], have departed from the model of accountability [willingly being arrested] espoused by JSO and XR in favour of a clandestine approach, inspired by counterparts in Europe and the writings of the radical social ecologist Andreas Malm.”
In a separate article about Shut the System, Gayle reports that STS says given the “new laws further criminalising disruptive protests [have] made traditional, accountable methods of activism increasingly unsustainable”, citing the example of “activists from JSO who received sentences of four and five years … for organising road blocks on the M25”, that makes “a clandestine approach increasingly attractive.”
The clear implication is that the increasing criminalization of non-violent disruptive protest in the UK has created a situation in which groups like Shut the System and the Citizens Arrest Network that have subsequently emerged.
Criminalization and escalating tactics against defenders
Gayle, Taylor and Lakhani have also highlighted: “Criminalisation does not happen in isolation. Experts say that deploying the legal system is part of a spectrum or playbook of escalating tactics deployed by corporations and their allies [that includes] online attacks, defamation, police surveillance, security deployments and violence.”
Translocal learning across borders
If criminalization is part of a common playbook used by states and if states learn from each other the spectrum of escalating ways to derail and repress social movements, it follows that it is important for activists in the Global North and defenders in the Global South to learn from each other how to navigate this assault.
Thus, as just one example in a rural context, learning could emerge from a translocal exchange between a campesina being threatened by the AGC paramilitary and a mining company in the Putumayo Amazon region of Colombia and an Indigenous land defender facing the likelihood of an RCMP CRU-BC militarized police raid and a pipeline company on Gitxsan territory in norther British Columbia, Canada.
There may be additional examples found in an urban context, as well as with journalists, lawyers and union members who are at-risk.
How have criminalization and violence informed the tactics of defenders in different parts of the world? What do they see as effective resistance and protest strategies? What role has the state and corporations played in this situation? How have they coped with the mental stress that comes with risk and compounded trauma? How do issues of colonization, impunity and historical injustice contribute to this? What do they see as credible and effective protection strategies to enable them to continue their work?
These are issues and questions that Peace Brigades International-Canada will be delving into over the coming months through discussions, virtual and in-person exchanges, articles, podcasts and other forums.
