[Source: BBC]

For 28 minutes in April, Deanna “Violet” Coco blocked a single lane of rush hour traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, calling for greater action on climate change.

Those 28 minutes would cost her a 15-month jail sentence.

Last week – in a move that has drawn international criticism – an Australian judge sent Coco to prison after she pleaded guilty to breaching traffic laws, lighting a flare and disobeying police orders to move on.

The climate activist had made an “entire city suffer” with her “selfish emotional actions”, Magistrate Allison Hawkins said. “You do damage to your cause when you do childish stunts like this.”

Coco will be eligible for parole in eight months, but her lawyer plans to challenge the sentence, which he says is “extraordinarily harsh” and “baseless”.

“There are five lanes on that bridge. She blocked one, and not for very long,” Mark Davis told the BBC. Her co-accused avoided jail, he pointed out.

“This is almost without precedent.”