US Report Highlights Sharp Decline in UK Citizens’ Rights

A recent U.S. State Department report highlights a decline in human rights in the United Kingdom in 2024, pointing to laws curbing free expression and conscience.

The “2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” released by the U.S. State Department, denounces the UK buffer zone law around abortion facilities that has led to prosecutions for peaceful prayer.

One case the report outlines is of a Adam Smith-Connor, a veteran British soldier convicted in October 2024 of praying outside an abortion facility in Bournemouth.

Smith-Connor was told he had to pay £9,000 ($12,000) in court costs all for the “crime” of praying silently in his head for the child he lost to abortion years ago.

The report states that UK law criminalize trying to have an effect on others, including through prayer, in specified places. It also highlights concerns over the UK’s Online Safety Act 2023, which in 2024 will grant Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, dominance over American tech giants with many UK users. Shockingly. this Act also has the ability to undermine encryption and privacy on messaging apps.

Second to this, Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act of April 2024 is addressed within the report for its introduction of penalties of up to seven years’ imprisonment for “stirring up hatred” through speech or publication on the internet.

The statement references a provision in Scotland’s buffer zone legislation that criminalizes prayer in a private home if it is audible or visible from a Safe Access Zone, according to Scottish MP Gillian Mackay.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International’s Lorcan Price went on record stating, “It’s plain to see that the censorship crisis is worsening in the U.K. — from citizens being arrested and prosecuted just for praying in their heads, to the Online Safety Act clamping down on free expression online.”

Scottish ADF representative Lois McLatchie Miller called the buffer zone law fundamentally flawed, asserting that it undermines free speech, thought, and religion by targeting prayer and mutually consenting conversations.

“Clearly, the ‘buffer zones’ law is fundamentally flawed when it comes to undermining basic freedoms of speech, thought, and religion,” Miller stated. “We all stand firmly against harassment, which has been illegal for many years — but the law goes much too far in preventing people from praying, or holding consensual conversations, in large public areas of Scotland.”

The report determines that these laws; buffer zones, the Online Safety Act, and Scotland’s hate crime law, are part of an uncomfortable trend of legislative pressure on free speech and conscience in the UK.

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