Judiciary seeking to deter UK protests

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/193247.html

The British Judiciary system, which lectures itself to be independent, has been imposing draconian sentences against activists to deter them from protests.

Earlier, in the past weeks, two young Britons received jail terms for what the authorities alleged as committing offences on demonstrations.

Frank Fernie, a 20-year-old student at York College, has been given a 12-month sentence for throwing two placard sticks at police in Piccadilly on the anti-cuts protest on March 26th, according to British media reports.

Charlie Gilmour, son of the Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and of Polly Samson, got 16 months for hanging off a flag at the cenotaph, sitting on a car and throwing a bin at a convoy of cars taking Prince Charles to the theatre during a student demonstration last year, the reports said.

These sentences are aimed at demoralizing and deterring protests over issues, which are of legitimate concern to millions of people.

The conviction of protesters would be a gift to police, who are seeking to criminalize protest and protesters, as well as a remedy for politicians, who prefer there were no protest against their policies.

British judges are also used to issuing deterrent sentences, which may kill the anger and frustration felt by many people over the impacts of the rise in student tuition fees, the cuts to public services and a number of other issues on their livelihood.

Ed Woollard, who threw the fire extinguisher from Millbank on the first student protest, was given three years. His family are campaigning over this sentence.

Protesters on the Gaza demonstrations in 2009 were kettled, attacked by police and then given punitive sentences. Many of them were young Muslims who had not protested before.

British politicians, from the premier to other high and mid-ranking officials, are referring to the unemployed and stressed youths who are angry about the war-mongering policies of their leaders, as mobs and thugs and gangs of criminals.

This is while that they are fully aware of what youths want. They know, youths are calling on their leaders to abandon their support for war policies and allocate ample funds and resources to an economy, which is already collapsed.