The Irish Council of Civil Liberties (ICCL) today said a ban on posters advertising tomorrow's Shell-to-Sea protest violates freedom of expression enshrined in Irish law.
Campaigners for five men jailed over their opposition to Shell's planned onshore gas pipeline in Co Mayo have organised a rally in support of the men in Dublin tomorrow.
Rory Hearne, campaigner
But they have resorted to advertising the rally on the Internet after the Council stopped them erecting posters on the streets of the capital.
A spokeswoman for Dublin City Council said: "The council does not give permission to for anybody to put posters on public property". She said the move was introduced last year to protect public property from being defaced.
ICCL Director Aisling Reidy said this morning that the European Convention on Human Rights had been enshrined in Irish law since December 31st, 2003.
"We believe that the policy of Dublin City Council not to allow posters to be displayed informing people of public events that are of public interest violates the right to freedom of expression under that convention," she said.
Supporters of the men are to picket the Council's offices on Wood Quay today to protest at the poster ban. Council workers have removed posters that have been erected, according to campaigners.
"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression," campaigner Rory Hearne said. "This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers."
The jailed men - four landowners and a protester known as the Rossport Five - have spent 92 days in prison for refusing to purge their contempt of court over a refusal to comply with a High Court injunction obtained by Shell.
Shell obtained the injunction after protesters blocked work on the pipeline in Co Mayo. Supporters of the men - brothers Philip and Vincent McGrath, Micheál Ó Seighín, Willie Corduff and Brendan Philbin - have called on Shell E&P to seek to have the injunction lifted.
The Shell-to-Sea campaign is calling on the company to locate offshore. It plans to place pickets outside Shell and Statoil filling stations around Dublin.
A letter of support for the men appeared in newspapers today, signed by Robert Ballagh, Christy Moore, Frances Black, Eamon Dunphy, Mary Lou McDonald, Finian McGrath, Mary White, Tommy Broughan and other politicians, writers and artists.
