Russia charges Greenpeace activists with piracy – ‘Most serious threat to Greenpeace’s peaceful environmental activism’ since its ship Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk by France
By Steve Gutterman, with additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Angus MacSwan
2 October 2013 MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian authorities charged Greenpeace activists from several nations with piracy on Wednesday over a protest against Arctic oil drilling at a platform owned by the state-controlled energy company Gazprom, the environmental group said. The piracy charges, which Greenpeace said were absurd, are punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The federal Investigative Committee said authorities had begun charging 30 people arrested after the protest last month, in which a Greenpeace icebreaker approached the Prirazlomnaya platform and two activists tried to scale the rig – a crucial part of Russia’s effort to mine Arctic resources. By midday, five people had been charged, Greenpeace said – Brazilian crew member Ana Paula Alminhana, Russian activist Roman Dolgov, Finnish activist Sini Saarela, British freelance videographer Kieron Bryan, and Dima Litvinov, an activist with Swedish and U.S. citizenship. “It is an extreme and disproportionate charge,” Greenpeace International executive director Kumi Naidoo said. “A charge of piracy is being laid against men and women whose only crime is to be possessed of a conscience. This is an outrage and represents nothing less than an assault on the very principle of peaceful protest.”
A court in the northern city of Murmansk last week ordered all 30 people from 18 countries who had been aboard the Greenpeace icebreaker Arctic Sunrise to be held in custody for two months pending further investigation. The Investigative Committee said authorities had begun to charge the activists on Wednesday but gave no details. The environmental group says the protest was peaceful and posed no threat, and that piracy charges have no merit in international or Russian law. President Vladimir Putin said last week the protesters were clearly not pirates but they had violated international law. The Investigative Committee said on Monday peaceful aims would not justify what it has called an “attack” that posed a threat to the platform and its personnel. Prirazlomnaya, Russia’s first offshore oil rig in the Arctic, is slated to start operating by the end of the year and is expected to reach peak production of 6 million tonnes per year (120,000 barrels per day) in 2019. […] Naidoo called Russia’s treatment of the protesters “the most serious threat to Greenpeace’s peaceful environmental activism” since its ship Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk while in port in New Zealand in 1985, when the group was protesting French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
Russia charges Greenpeace activists with piracy
All the institutions of "civilization" are in collusion with environmental destruction and depradation. The Courts are but one small enforcing arm in the army against Nature.
Expecting justice or even common sense in this assault against the planet is doomed to fail. Humanity has picked its path. It's the same path we've been on for a few thousand years. Rape, plunder, assault, take it all. Don't worry about the consequences, only the profits matter.
Assaulting ships and platforms will never work for this reason. It is the people behind these behomoths that need to be assaulted and prevented from engaging in their destructive tendancies.
"A charge of piracy is being laid against men and women whose only crime is to be possessed of a conscience."
They've committed the offence of boarding a merchant vessel without permission. That's more serious than the civil misdemeanour of trepass: it used to attract a fine and a possible six months in prison (I'm not sure of the current severity of the punishment).
"This is an outrage and represents nothing less than an assault on the very principle of peaceful protest."
Greenpeace breached the principles of peaceful protest: it put its members in obvious danger. An oil rig is a hazardous place.
"peaceful activism," my ass. Greenpeace are vandals and arsonists. They've done more to destroy the environmental movement than the Koch brothers.