Maya Anne Evans (32) from St Leonards was jailed for 13 days today for non-payment of over £300 in fines and costs, stemming from a court case in November 2009.

Ms Evans was arrested in May 2009 for taking part in a nonviolent “Die-in for NATO’s Victims in Afghanistan” outside Britain’s military nerve centre at Northwood, and later convicted of “obstructing the highway”. The demonstration – held to mark the 2nd anniversary of a NATO bombing attack that killed 47 Afghan civilians – was held to demand an end to the bombing of Afghanistan and the withdrawal of British troops from the country [1]. NATO bombing has continued since then. Indeed, NATO recently confirmed the death of eight civilians in an airstrike earlier this month [2].

Refusing to pay the fine on grounds of conscience, Ms Evans explained that she had just returned from a trip to Afghanistan where victims of the 10+ year war had pleaded with her to return to the UK and highlight their plight. "I don't feel what I did on 27 May 2009 was a crime", she told the Court. "We were trying to highlight the war crimes that had been committed."

Ms Evans recently returned from a month-long visit to Afghanistan where she worked with Afghan peace activists, and met with refugees, human rights workers and the relative of a civilian killed in an unmanned “drone” strike [3].

In 2005 she was convicted for reading the names of the Iraq war dead opposite the Cenotaph without police permission [4], and in 2010 she won “a partial victory” in the High Court, regarding British complicity in the torture of Afghan detainees [5].

Ms Evans said: “In Afghanistan I met a young man whose sister had been left widowed, with an infant son, by a NATO airstrike that killed five civilians. Meeting the victims of US and British policies has only strengthened my conviction that we need to terminate Britain’s role in this senseless and bloody war.”

She added: “Afghan peace campaigners urged me to do all I can to stop British involvement in their country. It is all of our responsibility to campaign against the death of innocent Afghan civilians, to pressurise our government which currently has blood in its hands.”

NOTES
[1]
 http://www.demotix.com/news/76194/wedding-die-protest-london-afghanistan-war-base
[2] “NATO Confirms Recent Airstrike Killed 8 Afghan Civilians”, Voice of
America, 15 February 2012,  http://tinyurl.com/natoairstrike
[3] See  http://fromhastingstokabul.wordpress.com
[4] “MPs condemn arrest of woman who spoke out”, Daily Mail, 8 December
2005 ( http://tinyurl.com/zoep7)
[5] ”Partial victory’ in challenge to UK Taliban transfers’, BBC, 25
June 2010;  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10412708