Support the SOCPA 7

22nd April Over recent years there have been many attempts to stop UK activists protest­ing against Europe’s largest ani­mal test­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry; Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. Activists have been arrest­ed, raid­ed, impris­oned and banned from tak­ing part in the cam­paign. Despite these attempts, SHAC (Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty) has been a ground­break­ing cam­paign which has suc­ceed­ed in almost bank­rupt­ing the mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tion. Hun­dreds of com­pa­nies have refused to deal with HLS after learn­ing about the hor­rors hap­pen­ing to ani­mals inside the tor­ture lab – includ­ing some of the world’s largest busi­ness and finan­cial insti­tu­tions.

There is an ongo­ing bat­tle tak­ing place in the UK, with SHAC try­ing to shut down HLS and vest­ed busi­ness and state inter­ests try­ing to shut down SHAC. The des­per­a­tion on the part of the state has lead to the intro­duc­tion of new laws crim­i­nal­is­ing legit­i­mate protest and the harass­ment and tar­get­ing of peace­ful and law­ful cam­paign­ers.

On 18th May 2012, three peo­ple were arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with a protest at a new­ly exposed sup­pli­er of Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. A fourth per­son was also arrest­ed a few weeks lat­er. The four were accused of SOCPA 145 (inter­fer­ing with a con­trac­tu­al rela­tion­ship so as to harm an ani­mal research organ­i­sa­tion) and SOCPA 146 (intim­i­da­tion of per­sons con­nect­ed with an ani­mal research organ­i­sa­tion). They were bailed with strict con­di­tions, such as ban­ning them from cam­paign­ing against HLS and order­ing them to live and sleep only at des­ig­nat­ed address­es.

SOCPA 145 and 146 were intro­duced in 2005 to class even minor pub­lic order offences against vivi­sec­tion as seri­ous crimes and to enable high­er sen­tenc­ing of anti-vivi­sec­tion pro­test­ers. An activist found guilty of a civ­il wrong whilst protest­ing against vivi­sec­tion now faces up to 5 years impris­on­ment, where­as some­one com­mit­ting the same act in con­nec­tion with anoth­er issue (anti-fas­cism, envi­ron­men­tal­ism etc) could expect to receive a small fine.

The four were rebailed numer­ous times over the next 8 months, although it is extreme­ly bad prac­tice (and fair­ly unusu­al) for the police to keep sus­pects on bail for such a pro­longed peri­od with­out reach­ing a deci­sion. The delay behind this became appar­ent on Thurs­day 17th Jan­u­ary 2013, when the four sus­pects and anoth­er two peo­ple, were raid­ed and arrest­ed – this time for “con­spir­a­cy” to com­mit SOCPA 145 and 146. This offence was alleged­ly in rela­tion to SHAC and took place between Octo­ber 2011 – June 2012, cov­er­ing 25 inci­dents, includ­ing the protest the four sus­pects were already on bail for (which has now been dropped as an indi­vid­ual charge). All six were ques­tioned and even­tu­al­ly bailed to return to the police sta­tion in April, again with strict con­di­tions and this time banned from com­mu­ni­cat­ing with each oth­er.

A sev­enth per­son was arrest­ed in this case short­ly after­wards and bailed along with the oth­ers.

Dur­ing the raids, the policed forced entry to a num­ber of prop­er­ties, includ­ing those of the sus­pects’ part­ners and mis­tak­en­ly, their neigh­bours. Many items were seized, includ­ing elec­tron­ics and per­son­al items uncon­nect­ed to the case and belong­ing to both the defen­dants and oth­er peo­ple liv­ing in the prop­er­ties.

The most wor­ry­ing aspect of this case is the lack of evi­dence of crim­i­nal activ­i­ty against the defen­dants as indi­vid­u­als. As with pre­vi­ous cas­es, “con­spir­a­cy” is being used to group peo­ple togeth­er, with­out the need for evi­dence against them indi­vid­u­al­ly. Dur­ing the police inter­views they men­tioned a num­ber of protests against com­pa­nies deal­ing with HLS (some of which the defen­dants were accused of attend­ing), as well as direct action (although there is no sug­ges­tion or evi­dence that the defen­dants had any knowl­edge or involve­ment in this). Beneath the legal ter­mi­nol­o­gy, the only thing they’re accused of doing them­selves, is tak­ing part in protests.

This case is one of the most recent exam­ples of the lengths the UK author­i­ties are going to in their attempt to stop peo­ple cam­paign­ing against vivi­sec­tion and espe­cial­ly HLS. When peo­ple are no longer able to attend a law­ful protest with­out being accused of tak­ing part in a crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy, it is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to speak out.

 

In an atmos­phere of increas­ing repres­sion against activists and the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of effec­tive cam­paigns, it is impor­tant that we show our sol­i­dar­i­ty for those involved and form a strong net­work to sup­port the UK ani­mal rights move­ment.

http://www.stopukrepression.org/