Armed Russian security forces lock up Greenpeace activists on ship
AFP
September 20, 2013 4:24PM
A mask-wearing officer of Russian Coast Guard points a knife at a Greenpeace activist during their attempt to climb Gazprom;ss Prirazlomnaya Arctic oil platform off Russia's north-eastern coast in the Pechora Sea. Picture: Greenpeace Source: AFP
ENVIRONMENTAL group Greenpeace says armed Russian officers stormed its ship protesting oil exploration in the Arctic and detained all its crew in a locked room.
Greenpeace Australia chief executive David Ritter said among those detained by Russian security personnel who boarded the Arctic Sunrise was activist Colin Russell, an Australian citizen.
An Australian permanent resident, Alex Harris, who also works for Greenpeace, was also detained, he said.
Greenpeace says 28 activists in total have been detained on the vessel.
The Arctic Sunrise was three nautical miles inside international waters, about 10-12 hours from the Russian port of Murmansk in the country's northwest, when it was boarded, Mr Ritter said.
He said the ship, which had been protesting oil exploration in the region, was now en route to Murmansk.
He said the activists' detention had come as a shock.
"It's a well-established principle that you can sail peacefully through international waters without having a nation state send its security forces to board your ship and arrest your crew at gunpoint,'' he told AAP.
"It's an illegal boarding by the Russian coastguard.''
Earlier, activist Faiza Oulahsen called AFP from Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise icebreaker and said the crew had been locked in the ship's mess.
"Twenty-nine of us are being held in the same room," said Ms Oulahsen, 26, who said that between 10 and 12 officers apparently from Russian security services had boarded the ship.
"No one has been hurt, and spirits are high. The crew is however not in control of the ship at this point," Greenpeace wrote on Twitter.
Two other Greenpeace activists detained earlier by Russian coastguards were also locked in the ship's mess, said Ms Oulahsen, before she abruptly hung up, saying she could not talk any longer.
The two men, from Finland and Switzerland, were detained when they tried to scale an oil platform owned by Russian energy giant Gazprom in the Barents Sea on Wednesday and held overnight.
Greenpeace said earlier that men armed with machine guns had boarded the ship by lowering themselves on ropes from a helicopter.
The environmental activism group said it believed its Dutch-flagged ship was in international waters when the raid began.
It said on Twitter that it lost contact with the ship for around an hour before activists on board managed to get in touch by telephone to say they were locked in.
Russia's foreign ministry earlier Thursday said it had summoned the Dutch ambassador to Moscow Ron van Dartel to issue a protest over the activists' "aggressive and provocative" behaviour.
It said the campaigners who had tried to climb up Gazprom's Prirazlomnaya oil rig had carried out "extremist activity".
Their actions "threatened people's lives and could lead to environmental catastrophe in the Arctic", the ministry said.
Vladimir Chuprov of Greenpeace's Russian office dismissed the foreign ministry claims, saying the ship had not violated any laws.
In a Greenpeace video released Wednesday, coastguard vessels can be seen clashing with activists in small boats, while an official accuses the campaigners of "terrorism."
Greenpeace said that men on the coastguard boats wore balaclavas, fired over 20 shots, and slashed the activists' inflatable boats with knives. Russian coastguards are part of the FSB security service, the successor to the KGB.
The group said its activists would hold a protest Friday morning outside Gazprom's Moscow offices.
Greenpeace says Gazprom -- the world's largest gas company -- risks causing a catastrophic oil spill in an area with three nature reserves that are home to polar bears, walruses and rare seabirds.
Gazprom is due to start production from the Prirazlomnaya platform in 2014.
Greenpeace argues that the oil platform is "an Arctic disaster waiting to happen".
Director Kumi Naidoo, who led a similar action against the oil rig last year, asked President Vladimir Putin to "restrain the coast guard", saying the campaign group "has done nothing to warrant this level of aggression".
Gazprom has expanded its oil production operations in recent years and describes the oil field that the Prirazlomnaya will tap into as an essential element of its oil business development strategy.
AFP/AAP
