In United Kingdom, prison closes for climate activists

Nine members of the Insulate Britain association were sentenced to several months of imprisonment for blocked roads around London and Dover. A very commented decision in the host country of the recent COP26.

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Four days after the end of the World Climate Conference (COP26), whose United Kingdom was the host, nine pacifist activists of the Insulate Britain Association were sentenced, Wednesday, November 17, to prison Farm by British justice, for blocked roads around London and Dover this fall. Ana Heyatawin, 58, and Louis McKechnie, 20, were sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. Ben Nozzle, 36, Romanesque Paluch-Machnik, 28, Oliver Rock, 41, Emma Smart, 44, Tim Speers, 36, and James Thomas, 47, all received a four-month sentence. Ben Taylor, 37, was six months ago, the Victoria Sharp judge who considered that the words of this very determined activist were “incendiary” and was similar to a “appeal to arms”.

Ben Taylor told the Court that if he was not going to prison, he would return “block the highway at the first opportunity (…). If you send us all [in prison], 100 people will come After us and take our places. If you imprison themselves, 1,000 others will come behind. “” The defendants, or some of them, seem to want to become martyrs of their cause, “said Sharp. “This government has dropped us and has betrayed us. (…) We remain solved and determined,” reacted the other members of Insulate Britain on Twitter on Wednesday.

The association, trained in the summer, requires the government that it isolates all social housing by 2025 and all other homes by 2030, to improve the energy efficiency of buildings In the United Kingdom, considered very mediocre. Insulate Britain went to action mid-September, on several occasions the M25 (the highway that goes around the Greater London) with very rudimentary means: some activists stick their hands and their feet in bitumen, obliging the motorists and heavyweights to stop until the police intervene.

They “threaten the” British “way of life

 a cleaning agent takes off the glue widespread on the road before Parliament, after the protesters S d'Insulate Britain glued to the Macadam, London, November 4, 2021.

This mode of action is directly inspired by the rebellion extinction, British movement created in 2018 and calling for civil disobedience To push the government to action against global warming. Rebellion extinction has led several action campaigns and theorized the tactics of arresting its members (which are linked or stick to cars or bitumen), aiming to make the police lose time. His actions, particularly in London in the fall, resulted in hundreds of arrests, and exasperated the Conservative Party in power.

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/Media reports.