Quaker on prison remand for breaking injunction

'Just Stop Oil’s demand is to simply stop issuing new fossil fuel and oil licences.'

A Quaker has been imprisoned on remand for breaking a protest injunction.

Rajan Naidu, of Stourbridge and Hampstead Meetings, was issued with an injunction not to return to an oil terminal in Kingsbury where he protested for the Just Stop Oil (JSO) group. He later returned with fifteen others and was arrested. He has been remanded in custody since 12 May.

Deborah Mitchell, from Falmouth Meeting, told the Friend: ‘All they did was stand at the side of the road with handmade notices. It’s a travesty. He didn’t interrupt anything. People have been protesting peacefully all over the county and issued with massively disproportionate injunctions. I was protesting in Essex and told not to go back into the county. Just Stop Oil’s demand is to simply stop issuing new fossil fuel and oil licences. It’s in the public interest to realise that continuing to issue these will escalate the rate of destruction of our planet.’

Prior to being remanded, Rajan Naidu said: ‘I have the same right to nonviolently resist fossil fuel corporations and their backers as some generations ago people had the right to ignore signs saying “Whites only”, or to break the law by refusing to report Jewish people to the authorities, or to break the law and not return someone escaping enslavement to their tormentor.’

Rajan Naidu was sentenced at Birmingham Magistrate Court on 19 May. His prison number is A4153EV. Quakers can send messages of support via rajaninprison@protonmail.com. There are eight JSO resistors currently on remand.

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