Right to protest ‘under attack’ in UK

HUMAN Rights Watch (HRW) warned yesterday that the UK has “severely restricted the right to protest” in recent years and was expanding “repressive measures” against peaceful demonstrators.

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BRITAIN'S Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

(AFP)

A report titled “Silencing the Streets’: The Right to Protest Under Attack in the UK,” comes a few weeks after Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was arrested and then released at a London protest in support of the Palestine Action group, banned under UK anti-terror laws.

“The UK is now adopting protest-control tactics imposed in countries where democratic safeguards are collapsing,’ HRW researcher Lydia Gall said.

“The Labour government has taken a deeply alarming direction on protest rights and appears to be determined to suppress these rights further,’ the rights organisation said in a press release.