'Hands off our Russian Arctic!'
Russia’s seizure in international waters of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, the arrests, refusal of bail and charges of piracy for activists and crew alike has provoked worldwide outrage. But what are the reasons for Moscow’s heavy-handedness?
The young girl with long hair stands behind the bars, holding on to them and occasionally breaking down into tears. Her lawyer gives her a bottle of drinking water, but the woman guard grabs it and takes it away from her…These pictures of the Greenpeace campaigner, Faiza Oulahsen, who was arrested on that day two months ago, have come to symbolise the case against Greenpeace.
Almost a month has elapsed since the Greenpeace volunteers tried to board the Prirazlomnaya oil platform. This was just one in a long line of memorable Greenpeace protests: from occupying the Shell Brent Spar oil platform in 1995 to flying a paraglider over the French nuclear power station Bugey last year. Unlike these other protests, however, this protest has escalated into a dramatic head-to-head with Russian authoritarianism.
The government seems determined, as it was with Pussy Riot, to make an example out of the Greenpeace protesters. The arrests were highlighted in a loud propaganda campaign on TV and state media. It was claimed that the Greenpeace protest was financed by the US State Department, bragging that ‘at last Russia had taken the Greenpeace eco-blackmailers down a peg or two’, and maintaining that ‘their battle is not with Gazprom Oil & Gas, but with Russia itself…’
And the campaign seems to be working. VTsIOM (Russian Centre for Studying Public Opinion) data shows that 60% of Russians approve of their government’s action and 8% consider it too lenient. Moreover, two-thirds of Russians are convinced that any attempts by foreign ecological organizations to halt Russian development of the Arctic should be stopped. It’s almost as if, with this huge propaganda campaign, Russia is preparing for a new cold war with the West.
Greenpeace has 12 active campaigns in Russia: from forest fires to the protection of Lake Baikal. It has organised a great number of protests and many people have have been inconvenienced by them. So why, then, have the security services waited until now to react, and react so forcefully? .. read more:
