My name is Debbie Hicks and I am a human rights activist against lockdown related measures and the fight to save our hard won freedoms.

I sincerely believe we have now arrived at the precipice before our basic rights are extinguished forever. I have a final opportunity, to make a stand and fight for our freedoms, to protect them and to defend them. The truth must be allowed to be heard, we must be permitted to stand up to, speak out against, and resist tyranny. 

Over the last 18 months, simply for exercising my rights, the very rights we should all be entitled to, I have been aggressively targeted by the state and arrested a total five times. I have been arrested at peaceful protests and at my home at night in front of my family, I have been repeatedly handcuffed, thrown in police cells, photographed, processed, prosecuted and lost my employment. I refuse however to be cowed or broken.  

I now face a total of four separate trials for protesting and campaigning during the Covid-19 pandemic (under both the Public Order Act and the Coronavirus Regulations) including simply being at protests, organising a protest, being an election organiser and for simply filming the empty Gloucester Royal Hospital in December 2020.

My lawyers are arguing on my behalf, in relation to filming at the Gloucester Royal Hospital that based upon the evidence and the case law, there is no case to answer and in relation to the protest and campaign cases it was never illegal nor is illegal to protest or campaign, even during the pandemic, and that therefore the charges brought against me are unlawful and should be dropped.

Despite this the prosecution have repeatedly refused to accept or properly engage with the strong legal arguments presented by my defence team and have steadfast refused to drop the charges. The result of the States insistence on continuing with these politically motivated prosecutions is that the cases must now go to Trial for the Courts to rule on.

The prosecutions stubborn stance has caused repeated adjournments to take place, causing a delay to all proceedings and the costs to defend myself have increased as legal representations and submissions have been submitted on my behalf to prevent the state obtaining criminal convictions against me. The Prosecution, ultimately hope to succeed in obtaining a “Criminal” Behaviour Order against me, to prevent me being an activist and to silence me.

All of my cases currently in the Magistrates’ Courts, as the court of first instance, will be heard this winter, however I need to present my cases to the High Court in London for these issues to be decided and to argue that these prosecutions amount to an abuse of process and should be stopped by the Court as a result.  

Success at the High Court can set legal precedent that will have far reaching effects upon the outcomes of others being similarly and unfairly prosecuted across the country. I am confident that British justice and the rule of law can and will prevail, but I need your help to achieve this. Without your help I will be left without a legal team and to fight the state and prosecution alone.

This has been an extremely difficult 18 months both for me and for us all, the support from the public in Britain and across the world has been extremely humbling but I need to fundraise to pay my legal team to fight my cases in the lower courts and to take my cases to the superior courts to set legal precedent for all of us and to fund and resist inevitable future prosecutions brought against me and others.  

It is difficult for me to ask for your help but any contribution to the legal fundraiser, however modest, will make a huge difference and I have little time left in which to raise the funds before the first in the series of cases being brought against me is heard on the 16^{th of} November 2021.

I will not give up the battle for our freedom of speech and our right to protest. The time to make a stand is now.  

I truly believe that in the end, we can change this, and with your help we will.

Hope and Unity

Debbie