There is a growing effort by states around the world to “criminalize climate and environmental protests.” And Spain stands out in this trend: it is one of the three countries –among democratic states– that are applying laws against organized crime. to repress climate activistsas revealed by a investigation from the University of Bristol (Great Britain).
“We have found three cases of this style: the United States, Germany and Spain,” the main author of the work, Oscar Berglund, explains to elDiario.es. “We find it completely unacceptable, since these activists cannot be considered mafia organizations under any circumstances.”
The Spanish case is that of the Futuro Vegetal group, whose activists are charged with the crime of criminal organization after being reported by the National Police. Several of them have yet to declare next January. The assumption attributed to them assumes that they associate with the objective of committing crimes, as described in the Penal Code. That there is a structure and coordination to commit crimes.
We find it completely unacceptable since these activists cannot be considered mafia organizations under any circumstances.
Oscar Berglund
— Professor of International Public and Social Policies. University of Bristol
The “criminalization” of protest and environmental activism in general and climate activism in particular has hardened as demonstrations have increased. Behind this phenomenon, researchers have detected “a combination between the response to the increase in numbers and ways of protesting and an effort to take drastic measures against those protests,” explains Berglund. “It is a symptom of our time – adds the professor – in which the states show themselves unable or unwilling to act against the climate crisis and, instead, they try to repress and depoliticize those who demand that action.”
In their study they emphasize that there is a “overcriminalization of activism while decriminalize the behaviors that cause the most climate and environmental damage.”
Researchers have identified four main formulas for suppressing activism.
Introduction of new anti-protest laws. “A flurry of new legislation has been passed in recent years,” they describe. This can criminalize through new criminal offenses, increase penalties and increase the powers of the police to repress protests, in addition to “providing impunity to agents when interacting with activists.”
Since 2019, 22 types of legislation “designed to limit the possibility of protest” have been created in the 14 countries that have been monitored for the study, among which there are liberal democracies like the United States, but also autocracies like Russia. Before that date, Spain had its own episode with the so-called gag law.
Criminalization in the courts. This implies the use of legislation designed against terrorist groups or criminal organizations for a new objective: reducing protest. It also results, say researchers from the University of Bristol, in the “depoliticization” of activists in the courts by “prohibiting them from mentioning climate change or environmental damage in court.” In Great Britain there are currently some activists in prison already serving sentences of several years in prison.
In Spain, 15 activists are awaiting trial for throwing beet-tinted water at the facade of the Congress of Deputies in April 2022. The Prosecutor’s Office has requested a sentence of 21 months in prison for a crime against historical heritage.
Increased surveillance. This can be carried out both by State security forces and by private companies, the work details. Among the practices it describes are “preventing” protest events from taking place, stopping, searching and arresting activists, making threats, and “infiltrating climate movements.” Here in Spain, organizations such as Ecologists in Action, Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth have told how they take “for granted that they are monitored.”
An average of 3% of climate or environmental protests face some form of police violence, this document states. In this sense, Australia and Great Britain have stood out by accounting for 20% and 17% of all those arrested respectively.
Murders and disappearances. Repression taken to the extreme “is common in some countries.” 2,000 “environmental defenders” have lost their lives between 2012 and 2023, the report states. 401 cases were in Brazil, 298 in the Philippines, 86 in India and 58 in Peru, according to this investigation.
Who are the real dangerous radicals?
In 2011, the American author Will Potter published his research on the harassment of the environmentalist social movement, which he called We greens are the new reds –in reference to the witch hunt of communists in the 1950s in the US–. Eleven years later, in 2022, Potter reflected for elDiario.es: “I wouldn’t be surprised if they received disproportionate penalties for the protests or if they were described as terrorists.”
That same year, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres publicly agreed with that vision: “Climate activists are sometimes portrayed as dangerous radicals. However, the truly dangerous radicals are the states that are increasing the production of fossil fuels,” he said after learning about the latest report from the International Panel of Experts on Climate Change (IPCCC).
Now, researcher Oscar Berglund believes that “some actors on the right and the business community have come to see the climate movement as a real threat to continued economic expansion and that is somewhat reminiscent of what they saw at the time in the Labor movement.” or socialist.”
However, the offensive against the protests – which are no longer seen with sympathy but as disruptive – is having an effect. Some activists have confessed to being afraid. “Many have been scared,” the climate movement itself has said. “I hope they don’t stop them,” concludes researcher Berglund.
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