Published: 6:27AM Thursday October 03, 2013 Source: Reuters
Greenpeace activist Dmitry Litvinov, a US and Swiss citizen, sits in a cage in a court room in Murmansk, Russia - Source: AP
International activist Ana Paula Alminhana Maciel of Brazil stands in a cage at the Leninsky District Court of Murmansk, Russia - Source: AP
More than a dozen Greenpeace activists and a video journalist have been charged with piracy by Russian authorities after a protest at an Arctic oil rig.
The Federal Investigative Committee said authorities had begun charging the 30 people from 18 countries arrested after two Greenpeace activists tried to scale the Prirazlomnaya oil platform, which plays a crucial role in Russia's effort to mine Arctic resources.
By evening, 14 people had been charged with piracy, Greenpeace said, including activists and icebreaking ship crew from Argentina, Britain, Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Ukraine, as well as a dual US-Swedish citizen and a British videographer who documented the protest.
New Zealanders, Jonathon Beauchamp and electrician David Haussman, were also among those on board the Artic Sunrise during the protest.
As yet, the pair have not been charged but remain in custody pending further investigation.
Greenpeace said the piracy charge, which carries a jail term of up to 15 years, was absurd.
"It is an extreme and disproportionate charge," said Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo.
"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."
Talking tough, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said concern for the environment did not justify breaking the law.
Mr Medvedev countered the argument in comments at a meeting on offshore oil extraction in the Caspian Sea in the southern city of Astrakhan.
"Concern for the environment must not be a cloak for illegal actions, no matter how high-minded the principles motivating participants," Mr Medvedev said.
A court in the northern city of Murmansk, a port city north of the Arctic circle, last week ordered all 30 people who had been aboard the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise to be held in custody for two months.
The environmental group said the protest at the platform owned by state-controlled energy company Gazprom was peaceful and posed no threat, and that piracy charges have no merit in international or Russian law.
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 in 2019.
Greenpeace says scientific evidence shows any oil spill from Prirazlomnaya, in the Pechora Sea, would affect more than 4800 km of Russia's northern coastline.
Russia, whose slowing economy is heavily reliant on income from energy exports, hopes Arctic oil and gas will help fuel future growth.
President Vladimir Putin, who has not ruled out seeking a fourth presidential term in 2018, has described Arctic shipping and development as priorities and last month announced plans to reopen a Soviet-era military base in the region.
Mr 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.
Former Rainbow Warrior captain Peter Willcox, an American, captained the Arctic Sunrise during the protest and was among the 30 people being held in detention in Murmansk.
Mr Putin said last week that the protesters were clearly not pirates, but had violated international law.
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