UK Greens Blast Jail Terms For Anti-Fracking Activists As 'Disproportionate, Perverse'

UK Greens Blast Jail Terms for Anti-Fracking Activists as 'Disproportionate, Perverse'

A UK court's ruling to sentence several environmental campaigners over a protest against commercial fracking in Lancashire is inadequate and corrupt, Shahrar Ali, the UK Green Party's spokesman on home affairs, told Sputnik on Thursday.

LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th September, 2018) A UK court's ruling to sentence several environmental campaigners over a protest against commercial fracking in Lancashire is inadequate and corrupt, Shahrar Ali, the UK Green Party's spokesman on home affairs, told Sputnik on Thursday.

On Wednesday, four men were convicted of public nuisance after attempting to halt a convoy of trucks delivering drilling equipment to a shale drilling site of the exploration company Cuadrilla near the English town of Blackpool last year. The men bypassed police cordons around the site and climbed onto the roofs of the trucks. Two of the people who were convicted were sentenced to sixteen months, while the third received fifteen months in prison. The fourth individual pleaded guilty and was given a one-year suspended sentence.

"The criminalization of three men for participating in a blockade of lorries destined for the fracking site is disproportionate and perverse," Ali said.

According to the official, instead of serving people, the government and the judiciary were "shamelessly" favoring corporate profit.

Keith Taylor, a member of the European Parliament from the Green Party, stated in a press release that "these people put their lives on hold to defend our environment and climate from the destruction imposed on it by a government blindly committed to fracking at any costs."

The only crime of the convicted campaigners was that they dared to resort to peaceful direct action after "every democratic route of opposition was ignored and overturned by the government," the lawmaker added.

Presiding judge Robert Altham admitted that the sentences would be higher if the men's actions had not been related to an act of protest, but he nevertheless deemed that the actions had caused inconveniences to local businesses and residents.

"In this case the defendants caused costs and disruption to Cuadrilla, but their other victims were the many members of public who were nothing to do with Cuadrilla ... and were viewed by these defendants as necessary and justified collateral damage," Altham said.

Caudrilla's plans to extract shale gas from eight sites across the Lancashire area have sparked numerous protests ever since preparatory work began 18 months ago.