Suspend UK from oil oversight body over protests crackdown, say campaign groups | Oil

A coalition of civil society groups requests that the British government be suspended from a key global organization which oversees the way in which oil and gas companies are managed.

Activists said Keir Starmer’s Labor Party supervised a “repression sponsored by fossil fuels” of peaceful protest and direct action in the United Kingdom since coming to power last year.

They argued that these measures – which have led to a record number of peaceful imprisoned beng climate activists – were incompatible with the members of the United Kingdom on the initiative of transparency of the extractive industries (EITI), an organization that brings together governments, businesses and civil society to improve the governance of great oil.

Jolyon Maugham, Executive Director of Good Law Project, was one of those who signed the Submission of Friday at the EITI.

“Until our government remembers that it is not a private security company for the petroleum and gas industry, recognizes the important right to protest and ceases to imprison peaceful climate activists, the United Kingdom should be suspended from the initiative,” he said.

The government has faced serious criticisms for its repression against the right of protest. Michel Forst, the United Nations rapporteur on environmental defenders, described the situation in the United Kingdom as “terrifying”. This week, the government has moved to proscribe a Palestinian action under the law on terrorism, putting the direct action group in the same legal category as Al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

ITI, which is based in Oslo, has more than 50 member countries, including the United Kingdom. It aims to give an equal voice to the large oil groups, governments and civil society to supervise the way in which the extractive industries are managed, the way in which contracts are awarded, to political gifts and taxes.

Part of its standard, to which all signatories must adhere, declares: “The government is required to ensure that there is an empowering environment for the participation of civil society with regard to relevant laws, regulations and administrative rules as well as real practice in the implementation of IIT.”

The activists said that successive British governments had violated this requirement, highlighting severe anti-protection measures that have been introduced and highlighting the influence of individuals, including the government’s independent adviser on political violence, and Rightwing Thinktanks with links with the fossil fuel industry.

Tim Crosland, director of climate justice Charity Plan B, who also signed the submission, as well as the corner house and defend our juries, said: “The British government has sold democracy to its own sponsors in the fossil fuels industry. It allows them to write the laws to make silence and imprison its own criticisms of civil society. If this in accordance with EITI standard for the promotion of civil civil commitment in the government of the extractive industry, the standard of the standard.

Member countries must be validated from the EITI standard at least every three years and the United Kingdom’s validation period should start on July 1. A decision on its continuous membership is expected later in summer.