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Protect the right to protest

Write to the NSW Premier and Attorney General to repeal the anti-protest laws and enshrine the right to protest now!

    Protect the right to protest

    Another young person has been wrongly sentenced to prison for non-violent direct action. The harsh, excessive and unfair treatment of non-violent protestors has gone too far, for too long, it’s wrong and it must end now

    Draconian and undemocratic anti-protest laws rushed through the Parliament by the then Coalition Government and Labor in 2022 have led to extreme and harmful impacts on protestors and the fundamental right to protest in NSW.

    Let’s be clear, no one, no matter who they are, should be subjected to a term of imprisonment for engaging in peaceful protest and non-violent civil disobedience as part of political protest.  

    21-year old Laura Davy, is the latest person to be wrongfully punished by a term of imprisonment. Laura was sentenced by a Magistrate to 3 months in prison for simply disrupting a coal loader at the world's largest coal port in Newcastle.

    The reality of harsh and draconian anti-protest laws is that they are enforced by both police and magistrates poorly, arbitrarily and dangerously. 

    Laura, whose only crime was to peacefully disrupt the business-as-usual  fossil fuel industry now follows in the footsteps of other environmental activists such as the Knitting Nannas and Violet Coco, who were subject to extreme scrutiny, harsh and excessive penalties and lengthy court-cases under these anti-protest laws. 

    There is no world in which a young person should be thrown into prison for peacefully standing up for a better world for all of us.

    So far, the anti-protest laws have been disproportionately wielded against women and younger people fighting against climate injustice. Instead of ensuring their protection, this Government is unjustly targeting and criminalising these brave activists.

    Fortunately, Laura has appealed their prison sentence and is now released on bail. I hope, and strongly suspect, that their prison sentence will be overturned, because decades of legal precedent in this State, Country and other democratic legal systems says justice is not served by locking up non-violent political prisoners. But for as long as these laws are written in our law books we face this draconian and harmful reality. 

    Environmental and civil and human rights organisations and lawyers have been calling on the NSW Labor Government to scrap these punitive and severe laws which unjustly and disproportionately target environmental protestors. Davy’s prison sentence comes just days after the Human Rights Law Centre released a report which states that environment and climate activists are the most consistently targeted by these anti-protest laws and calling on the Government to repeal the very same laws Davy was charged under.

    The Minns Labor Government must listen to the experts in the room and reverse these punitive and damaging laws. Protest needs to be protected in our democracy.  

    With these laws now under review, it is time to tell the Minns Labor Government that enough is enough. 

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