Letter From NZ (About Those Greenpeace "Activists")

Arctic activists knew the risks

Sean Plunket
Stuff, 
11/10/2013


I've never been held in a jail cell but it is, I imagine, not a very pleasant experience. I also imagine Russia would be one of the worst places to find yourself incarcerated, along with North Korea, Myanmar, El Salvador and China.

Certainly the 30 Greenpeace activists from 18 different nations currently held at the pleasure of Vladimir Putin's government are finding the going pretty rugged. Among their various complaints is the fact that it is cold, there are some nasty people in jail with them and the guards do not speak English. Well what did they expect – Sky [TV] and a sauna?


One cannot imagine that the crew of the Arctic Sunrise headed to the Arctic circle to illegally board an oil drilling rig with the expectation that a country with a long history of state repression and brutality was going to welcome them with open arms, put up its hands and cease drilling for black gold because a bunch of well-intentioned foreigners are worried about global warming, polar bears and whales.

It would have been the height of naivety for the world's largest multinational protest group to think it could out run or out-manoeuvre a nuclear-armed ex-superpower with one of the largest navies in the world. So we can logically conclude that the Arctic Circle 30, including two Kiwis, set off on their protest with the expectation and indeed the intention of being arrested, quite legally, for breaching the laws of Russia.

In those circumstances the faux outrage Greenpeace is now expressing around the globe can be seen only as part of a carefully planned and executed campaign in which the 30 jailbirds were either willing participants or unwitting pawns.

The campaign has reached all the way to Wellington with local Greenpeace members holding a rally outside the Russian Embassy in Messines Rd, Karori, last weekend and our diplomats in Moscow being instructed to provide what support they can to the New Zealanders banged up in a cold cell in a foreign land.

I for one can't get that worked up about it . . .