Mandatory sentencing and non-violent protest
By Robert Milne
DARWIN — The Northern Territory's mandatory sentencing laws have always been controversial. Now NT police are attempting to use these laws, originally designed to protect property, to jail activists for taking non-violent protest action.
Under the mandatory sentencing laws, if during a previous protest an individual was charged and fined for some "offence", a second offence could attract a minimum two-week jail sentence.
Police have found new applications for old laws in order to lay more charges. For example, the charge of "unlawful use of a motor vehicle" was originally designed to convict people for joy-riding and similar activities. Yet on March 21, three Jabiluka uranium mine protesters were charged with this offence after they took part in a non-violent "lock on" (chaining or padlocking themselves to machinery to prevent its use) in July.
The protesters, Rebekah Nissim, Mike Williams and Wendy Edwards, were trying to prevent violence by stopping the mining of uranium, which can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons and produces nuclear waste. The action did not damage machinery or property.
The three were acquitted and awarded costs, but the charges were part of continuing attempts to intimidate protesters. NT police charge activists on the flimsiest pretext; I was once threatened with a charge of property damage (with the chance of a two-week sentence) for running in front of a police four-wheel-drive and grabbing the bull bar.
The use of the law in this way is a serious attack on people's right to protest.