Peace activist faces ASBO
The Metropolitan Police are threatening pacifist campaigner Chris Cole with an ASBO
A pacifist campaigner has been threatened with an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) by the Metropolitan Police. Chris Cole, a Roman Catholic peace activist from Oxford, has already served several prison sentences for offences committed in the course of nonviolent protests (see ‘More faith than hope’, 4 February 2011).
The police have applied to the courts for an ASBO that would ban him from the City of Westminster until 2022, other than when passing through on the London Underground. The ASBO would also prevent him from being in possession of paint, marker pens, chalk or bolt croppers anywhere outside Oxford.
Chris said: ‘Rather than spraying bullets in Iraq or spilling blood in Afghanistan, I have spilled paint on the Downing Street pavement and sprayed paint on the MoD walls. In all honesty, which is the real anti-social behaviour here?’
The court will consider the police’s request at the end of Chris’s upcoming trial on a charge of criminal damage, relating to a protest at Downing Street.
In 2005, a court refused a police request to give an ASBO to the Quaker peace activist Lindis Percy. The judge insisted that ASBOs should not ‘be used as a club to beat down the expression of legitimate comment’.
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