SIXTEEN Just Stop Oil activists jailed for a combined 41 years for non-violent action vowed to “never give up” today.

The activists were sentenced after the former so-called independent extremism adviser Lord Walney, a lobbyist for the arms and oil industry, urged the harshest response for those resisting genocide, whether from carbon emissions or Israeli bombs.

His report, released last May, urged that groups like Palestine Action and JSO be treated like organised crime groups. 

After its release, there was a surge in harsh sentences, including a five-year prison term for organising a protest on Zoom.

In a New Year’s message from activists jailed in prisons around the country, they wrote: “The brutal sentences that followed his report were aimed at ‘deterrence’. They were designed to make us give up.

“But our resistance is not like the addiction to fossil fuels — a habit to be broken. 

“It is the consequence of a profound commitment to nonviolence and the refusal to be complicit in the destruction of our fellow human beings and the poisoning of life on Earth.

“The state-sponsored assault on our living planet gives us no choice. We will never give up.”

The public have been urged to show their support at a special mass appeal hearing for all 16 activists, set to be held at the Royal Courts of Justice on January 29 and 30.