The right to peaceful assembly is a fundamental, empowering right (in domestic & international law) which enables active participation & citizenship outside of narrow politics.

IMO, the constraints proposed constitute unwarranted & disproportionate interference with the right.
The obligation to respect and ensure peaceful assemblies places positive and negative obligations on States. States must not prohibit, restrict or block peaceful assemblies without compelling justification, nor sanction participants or organisers without legitimate cause.
On the flip side, States must facilitate peaceful assemblies and ensure the provision of a legal framework in which the right to peaceful assembly can be exercised effectively.

Although the right is not unrestricted, the burden is on the authorities to justify restrictions.
The link to the Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Bill is here. Robert Buckland has concluded that the Bill is compatible with the ECHR.

On a first reading of this Bill, there are substantial questions to be asked as to how and why.

publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill…
Time constrains, I’ll try to do a further thread soon.

I’ve spoken this week on restrictions on the right to protest in Turkey & India.

Peaceful political protest is an integral right to the effective, inclusive functioning of democracy. We damage it at our collective peril.

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More from @WomaninHavana

1 Mar
#HongKong Crowds gathered outside court as 47 pro-democracy candidates, campaigners & activists are charged with conspiracy to commit subversion under national security law #NSL.

The prosecutions, a clear statement of intent, are descending into farce. Trouble in Hong Kong. 🧵
Hard to know where to begin with this statement.
The evidence being relied upon predates the #NSL which is said not to be retroactive. And yet...
Read 13 tweets
8 Feb
This is bitterly disappointing, a low blow.

Last week @BarHumanRights, in supporting the #GenocideAmendment, restated its concern that the Govt position - to maintain the status quo - may be used to justify inaction in the face of credible evidence that genocide is occurring.
See the full text of our @BarHumanRights statement supporting #GenocideAmendment.

It allows courts to do what they do well- adjudicate on the facts - & Parliament to take informed decisions on the basis of a preliminary legal determination.
Any proposal by govt to substitute a judicial determination of genocide for one by @CommonsForeign is circular. The Committee *already* has that power, it has used it before & been ignored. The long-standing govt position is a court determination is required.
Read 4 tweets
2 Feb
#India Many have seen reports of the massive #FarmersProtests. As the right to dissent faces increasing challenge in India, press freedom is again threatened. 8 journalists face criminal charges, incl sedition, for reporting allegations of rights abuses during the protests.
If you are interested in the way dissent and free expression has become increasingly criminalised in Modi’s #India, since 2014, this excellent new database bears close examination.
Worth reading this @hrw piece on what’s happening on the official response to the #FarmersProtest. India’s govt has focused on discrediting peaceful protesters, harassing critics of the government, & prosecuting those reporting on the govt: @mg2411
hrw.org/news/2021/02/0…
Read 11 tweets
23 Jan
“It was pretty clear we had to be complicit in the fallacy that these things could just work, or risk losing any influence we might have.”

This line, from a CEO, sums up the last 4+ years of May & Johnson’s Brexit.

This brilliant #longread undoes it all. on.ft.com/3c0vhPX
Imagine any CEO or company board reaction to news that financial analysis had not been carried out for fear of what it might reveal.

Then transpose to a govt, acting against the economic interests of its own people to maintain the fiction that if we just believe hard enough...
Johnson led Brexit, he chose its parameters, he defined them by the obsessive ideology of sovereignty over all else, and he chose not to extend time to at least try to improve on the inevitable terms dictated by his choices.

The cries of freedom will ring very hollow.
Read 6 tweets
20 Jan
Light years away from all we have witnessed, so many women, and women of colour, centre stage.

Representation matters. 💜

Something wonderful today. 💜

#justiciaparatodos.
It’s truly over. He’s gone.

Over to President Biden.

Change. Hope.
Read 7 tweets
26 Dec 20
*That* Gove article shows exactly what has been wrong with the Brexit project since 2016.

It doesn’t offer truths or even perspective. It only offers dishonesty or misrepresentation. Coming as it does from the heart of this govt, the damage is more fatal than “ugly politics”.
For all the breathless reporting of the #BrexitDeal in Britain, as ever with this sorry saga, outside eyes are often the clearest.

This analysis in the @nytimes is a better starting point than so much of what passes for reporting here.
nytimes.com/2020/12/25/wor…
For example:

“Britain’s services sector — encompassing not only London’s powerful financial industry, but also lawyers, architects, consultants and others — was largely left out of the 1,246-page deal, despite the sector accounting for 80 percent of British economic activity.”
Read 4 tweets

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