'CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS NOT OUR PROBLEM'

New Zealander Martin Trowland has been jailed for three years by a British court for protesting. He was sentenced under new laws that legal experts say ''clearly violate international human rights standards.' But the New Zealand Government has remained silent. 

IF ASHBURTON MAN and climate activist Martin Trowland had been given a lengthy jail sentence by the Chinese Government for exercising his legitimate and democratic right to protest, odds on the New Zealand Government would have publicly voiced its concern. It might even have publicly condemned the jailing of one of its citizens. There is little doubt it would have viewed it as the act of an authoritarian government that seeks to suppress all political dissent. 

Trowland said during the protest action: 'I'm willing to do this because I'm not willing to sit back and see everything burn. Our corrupt politics is causing this disruption.'

But Martin Trowland was jailed by British authorities last week and the New Zealand Government has had nothing to say. This is in despite of the fact that Trowland was imprisoned under new laws described by legal experts as 'draconian' and which 'clearly violate international human rights standards.'

Chris Daw QC, a leading British barrister has commented that the new legislation represents 'the biggest widening of police powers to impose restrictions on public protest that we’ve seen in our lifetimes.' 

'The legislation hands over the power of deciding whether a protest is justified or should be allowed — decisions we as citizens have had for generations — directly to the home secretary. That’s an extremely chilling development. It’s completely contradictory to everything the liberty of the free citizen is about in Britain.'

But despite widespread protest against the proposed legislation the Police, Crime and Sentencing Bill was passed by the British Parliament in April 2021. The final vote was 365 votes to 265 with the Labour Party voting against the bill. Labour's Shadow Home Secretary described the legislation as destroying 'the fine British tradition of protecting the right to protest.'

It is under these new laws that Martin Trowland and fellow climate protester Marcus Decker have been jailed for unfurling a 'Stop Oil' banner on the Queen Elizabeth II bridge in October last year. The bridge was closed for the duration of the protest.

After already spending some six months in custody the two men were sentenced to three years imprisonment, reportedly the longest sentence ever given for a peaceful climate protest in Britain.

'You have to be punished both for the chaos you caused and to deter others from seeking to copy you,' Judge Shane Collery KC said at sentencing.

It does seem though that the political sentiments expressed by Judge Collery are shared also by some New Zealand politicians. Wellington mayor Tory Whanau for example, formerly the Green Party's chief of staff from 2017 to 2021, has expressed her dissatisfaction with Restore Passenger Rail protesters and their protests that have temporarily disrupted Wellington traffic. 

According to Whanau there need to be tougher punishments for the protesters. And it is here, started by demands by establishment politicians like Whanau, that the curbs against legitimate and democratic protest begin. But as the noted American author Howard Zinn wrote: 

'Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves and the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.'