Amnesty International reminds the State Attorney General that peaceful actions of civil disobedience are legitimate forms of protest and do not constitute terrorist acts

2023-09-11 15:41:00
Activists from the Scientists Rebellion and Extinction Rebellion organizations are evacuated after their protest at the doors of the Congress of Deputies. © Picture alliance / Pacific Press | Fer Capdepon Arroyo.

The State Attorney General, in his annual memory, has included activities of the environmental organizations Extinction Rebellion and Futuro Vegetal under the heading “National Terrorism.” Amnesty International calls on this institution to consider the peaceful nature of the activities of these organizations, and recognize that their actions are protected by the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. Last year, this report already included actions by environmental organizations within the “international terrorism” section, indicating that these groups were settling in Spain.

“Peaceful civil disobedience is part of freedom of expression and must be protected by all State institutions, including the Public Prosecutor’s Office. “Pressing terrorism charges against participants in peaceful protest actions is an undue limitation on freedom of expression and assembly and can have a deterrent effect, which represents a clear threat to the right to protest in our country,” said the Amnesty International spokesperson. , Daniel Canales.

Amnesty International regrets that the “broad and vague” definition of terrorist crimes in the Penal Code allows peaceful protest actions, such as those carried out by these environmental groups, to be classified as terrorist acts. The organization has called on countless occasions for the reform of terrorism crimes in the Penal Code to ensure that they do not contain excessively general or imprecise definitions nor do they go beyond the definition of “terrorist acts” formulated by the UN rapporteur on this matter.

Additional information

Acts of civil disobedience involve deliberately breaking a rule for reasons of conscience or because it is understood as the most effective way to express social or political disagreement.

The action of Extinction Rebellion and Scientist Rebellion on the steps of the Congress of Deputies was included, among other actions of these groups, in the report “Right to protest in Spain: seven years, seven gags that restrict and weaken the right to peaceful protest in Spain” as an example of civil disobedience.