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Dutch arrest 30 Greenpeace activists blocking Russian Arctic oil tanker Dutch arrest 44 Greenpeace activists blocking Russian Arctic oil tanker
(about 7 hours later)
Dutch police on Thursday arrested around 30 Greenpeace activists, including the captain of the lobby group's ship Rainbow Warrior, as they tried to stop a Russian tanker delivering Arctic oil from docking. The very different reactions of European countries to Greenpeace protests was seen on Thursday when 10 Dutch armed anti-terror police boarded the environment group’s flagship outside Rotterdam port and arrested 44 activists trying to stop a Russian tanker from unloading its shipment of Arctic oil.
"The captain has been arrested and the ship is being taken elsewhere else," police spokesman Roland Eckers told AFP of the Rainbow Warrior. Although the activists were taken to several Rotterdam police stations and the Rainbow Warrior towed ashore, the ship and most of the protesters were released without charge within a few hours.
"Several activists climbed a fence to prevent the ship docking and several others were in small boats also trying to impede the tanker and several were arrested, around 30 activists," Eckers said. This represented a stark contrast to September 2013, when 20 armed Russian navy commandos boarded the group’s Arctic Sunrise icebreaker, towed it 200 miles to Murmansk and jailed the crew of 28 environmental activists and two freelance journalists for more than two months on charges of piracy and then hooliganism.
The Rainbow Warrior was being captained by Peter Willcox, who was among campaigners detained by Russian authorities last year after staging a high-profile protest against Arctic drilling. Greenpeace activists, who used paragliders, climbers, a fleet of boats and inflatables in Rotterdam, said the action was a serious attempt to prevent the Gazprom tanker Mikhail Ulyanov from entering the port and was not stage-managed, despite a boatload of journalists being present and the port given advance warning of a protest.
No one else aboard the Rainbow Warrior was arrested, while the tanker, bringing a first delivery of offshore Arctic oil to Rotterdam, was now safely moored, police said. “It tells us more about how the authorities deal with dissent in
Holland compared to Russia. We had every intention of stopping the oil
being offloaded. The intention was just as serious as it was in Russia
last September,” said Ben Ayliffe, Greenpeace International Arctic
campaigner.
Seven of the “Arctic 30” were part of the Rotterdam protest, including the captain Peter Willcox.
“Thirty
of us went to prison for shining a light on this dangerous Arctic oil,
and we refuse to be intimidated. This tanker is the first sign of a
reckless new push to exploit the Arctic, a place of incredible beauty
which is melting before our eyes. I stand with 5 million others against
those who put short-term profit above the common interests of humanity,”
said Faiza Oulahsen from the Netherlands, who took part in both
protests.
The group is calling for an end to offshore Arctic oil
drilling both in Russia and elsewhere in the world. The environmental
group has heavily criticised international companies like Shell, BP and
Statoil for their global Arctic ambitions as well as their joint
ventures with Russian energy firms.
Greenpeace International
executive director, Kumi Naidoo, said: “It’s increasingly clear that our
reliance on oil and gas is a major threat not just to the environment,
but to global security. Arctic oil represents a dangerous new form of
dependence on Russia’s state-owned energy giants at the very moment when
we should be breaking free of their influence. We cannot hope for any
kind of ethical foreign policy while our governments remain hopelessly
dependent on companies like BP, Shell and Gazprom.”
Last night the Mikhail Ulyanov was docked and preparing to offload its oil.
Russia is still holding the Arctic Sunrise in Murmansk.