• Global Yard The controversial 'red card' to Lineker for comparing the 'Tories' with Nazi Germany


WHO. Civicus Monitor has downgraded the UK in its annual civil rights index, matching it with Hungary and Poland. WHAT. The organization denounces the "growing authoritarianism" of its laws and the "hostile environment" towards activists. WHY. The Police, Crime, Convictions and Courts Act and the Public Order Act were pushed by Boris Johnson to restrict protests.

"No human being is illegal" was the slogan with which thousands of Britons took to the streets over the weekend in protest against the Immigration Act. "Kill the Bill" was the slogan used a year ago in another chain of demonstrations demanding nothing less than "the right to protest."

The Police, Crime, Convictions and Courts Act, promoted by the then "premier" Boris Johnson, nevertheless marked the beginning of a severe curtailment of freedom of assembly and expression. The controversial law has been used to stem the tide of crusties of climate change and months later to arrest anti-monarchist protesters following the death of Elizabeth II.

The Public Order Act now aims to give a new twist by drastically limiting actions that may cause "disruption" to the public, with sentences of six months in prison for chaining or "sticking" to a building, a pole or the road to cut traffic on bridges, highways or infrastructure. The law, currently in process, has been criticized as the most restrictive of Western democracies.

For these and other reasons, Civicus Monitor has just downgraded the UK in its global civil rights index to catch up with countries like Hungary and Poland. The international organization has denounced "the growing authoritarianism" and "the hostile environment" towards non-governmental organizations and representatives of civil society.

The Civicus Monitor ranking divides nations into five groups: "open," "restricted," "obstructed," "repressive," or "closed." The United Kingdom has gone from the second category (where countries like Spain or France are) to the third division, rubbing shoulders with Morocco or South Africa.

The "retreat" initiated by Johnson and his controversial Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has even been amplified by Rishi Sunak and the even more controversial Suella Braverman, the same one who dismissed the climate protesters as "tofu eaters" and who has promised to take the Public Order Act to the ultimate consequences.

In his subtle way, Sunak has recalled that the right to protest "is not absolute" and has defended actions to keep activists at bay: . "We cannot allow a small minority to disrupt the lives of ordinary people; This is not acceptable and it is going to end."

"UK has political prisoners"

More than a thousand activists were arrested and at least 100 imprisoned in the last year, mainly in actions of Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, vilified as the "ecovandals" by the conservative press. One hundred writers, artists and actors -from Simon Schama to Biran Eno or Emma Thompson- wrote a letter of solidarity to the thirteen who were still imprisoned at the beginning of the year: "The UK now has its own political prisoners"...

Amnesty International sounded the alarm last autumn about "the threat to the right to protest" contained in the controversial law. "Parties cannot rely on a vague definition of public order to justify restrictions on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly," warned Amnesty International's UK executive director, Sacha Deshmukh.

"Is the UK turning its back on democracy?" asks Human Rights Watch in one of its "daily dispatches." "The Public Order Act aims to turn protesters into criminals, with measures such as 'Severe Disruption Prevention Orders', which can prohibit anyone who has previously been arrested from participating in protests or face 51 weeks in jail."

The association Global Witness, which denounces attacks on environmental activists around the world, has joined the protests against British laws that "intend for protesters to be perceived as enemies of the state rather than facilitators of a more participatory democracy."

Plans to restrict the right to strike, the new Bill of Rights that aims to reduce or eliminate the influence of the European Court of Human Rights or the new Immigration Law – denounced by the UNHCR as a "denial of the right to asylum" – have also contributed in their own way to the "downgrading" of the international perception of the United Kingdom.

According to The Trust Project criteria

Learn more

  • United Kingdom
  • Poland
  • Hungary
  • Add
  • European Court of Human Rights
  • Morocco
  • France
  • Boris Johnson
  • Justice