Demonstrations were also held in cities including London, Sydney and Rome.In Jersey, the protest began in the Royal Square and made its way to the People’s Park where speeches were made.
Some of the placards which were on display read: ‘We do not consent’, ‘Fear sells unless you stop buying it’ and ‘Freedom is a right not a gift’.
One of those who attended, Hedi Green, called on the government to demonstrate more transparency and more accountability.
‘It was a very peaceful event and was represented across the whole of Jersey’s social spectrum – from the very young to very old,’ she said. ‘People came together because they have lost trust in the government. There is a distinct lack of transparency and accountability and the public should not have to go through the Freedom of Information unit to get the answers which they should be getting from their elected States Members.’
Advocate Hiren Mistry, principal of Mistry Law, claimed that the ongoing restrictions were infringing Islanders’ human rights and that there was not enough justification for the measures.
‘We are supposed to get to a situation where the hospitals can cope with this virus. We are now at that stage. They are rolling out vaccines left, right and centre.
‘At the same time, we have got to ask, where are the freedoms that were promised as part of this vaccination programme? There are none,’ he said.
‘People have fought for these rights and had wars for these rights. They are not things to be sidelined – they are fundamental human rights that every democracy needs to adhere to.
‘There is derogation within the law to say – with, for example, a rapist or a murderer – the police can operate surveillance on you. There are legitimate aims to say look, this is proportionate to breach this person’s human rights but there was a justification for it.
‘What are the justifications for the restrictions now because we now have effectively a non-democratic government that is signing off on laws and orders without the full checks that they would get in the States Chamber?
‘Telling me that I have to stay at home for 14 days infringes on the right to my liberty. You only get that normally because of curfew orders because you have committed a crime. What crime are we committing here?’
Advocate Mistry also criticised the regular publication of statistics by the government saying that, in isolation, they lacked context and were potentially making the Island’s Covid situation look worse than it actually was.
He also asked the government to publish figures outlining how many people had died from suicide during the pandemic so these figures could be compared to the number of deaths caused by Covid.
He said that the number of call-outs for mental-health crises had increased exponentially during the pandemic and questioned the impact self-isolation was having on the detection of child abuse and domestic violence.
‘In isolation, in my view, it [the figures] means absolutely nothing. You are just scaremongering and what you are doing is trying to muster up this whole thing with the government just imposing restriction upon restriction and further breaches of human rights.
‘At the moment they are just pumping out these figures. How many people are actually in hospital? About ten now. That is just a number.
‘Can you actually compare that to the last ten years and say, over the last ten-year period, how many people were in hospital?
‘At the moment, it is just numbers without any correlation to anything. Without looking at things on a comparative basis, it looks horrendous but it means nothing.’
