Maya Evans

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Maya Evans

Born	December 18, 1979 (1979-12-18) (age 28)
Cooking style	vegan

Maya (Anne) Evans (born December 18, 1979) is a British peace campaigner who was arrested alongside fellow activist Milan Rai in October 2005 opposite the Cenotaph war memorial in London, for refusing to cease reading aloud the names of British soldiers who had been killed in Iraq following the 2003 Iraq war.

Evans, a vegan chef and anti-war activist from Hastings, became the first person in the UK to be convicted under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 for taking part in an unauthorised demonstration within 1km of Parliament Square, she received a conditional discharge and a fine.

In December 2006 Evans and Rai lost an appeal against their convictions. Evans was also arrested at the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth in 2007 for obstruction of the highway.

Evans, with Rai, is one of the main campaigners in the group 'Justice Not Vengeance', focusing on Iraq, Afghanistan, civil liberties and Islamophobia. Evans has been on speaking tours in the UK in 2006 and 2007, her letters appear regularly in The Guardian and The Independent and she has regular column in the monthly Peace News. On December 10, 2007, Human Rights Day, Evans was awarded the Peter Duffy Award by the pressure group Liberty "for her campaigning work and commitment to the cause of liberty" and "courage in standing up for our fundamental rights to peaceful protest and freedom of speech".