SAVE THE ARCTIC –FREE OUR ACTIVISTS – A Plea From Greenpeace For A Niagara, Ontario Member Of This Group And Others

A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper, followed by a post from Greenpeace and a petition to the Russian Embassy that you can sign

“John Lennon’s Imagine played mightily in the background (and) from the moment the word ‘Greenpeace’ was first uttered in public, we had it – or we thought we did. Ban the bomb and save the redwoods! Nukes harm trees! At least it was a good start.”

–         From the book ‘The Greenpeace to Amchitika’ by one of Greenpeace’s founding members,  Robert Hunter, recalling the founding of Greenpeace on the west coast of Canada at the dawn of the 1970s.

Paul Ruzychi, a Niagara, Ontario native and Greenpeace activist, charged with piracy while in a Russian jail.

Okay, Russia, enough is enough. When armed officers from your Coast Guard arrested 30 Greenpeace activists and crew members, including Paul Ruzycki, a native of the Niagara, Ontario town of Port Colborne, this past September and threw them in jail that was disturbing enough.

But charging them, as your courts proceed to do this October 4, with piracy – a crime of violence that carries a maximum jail term of up to 15 years in your country – is outrageous. Even your Russian President, Vladimir Putin, was recently quoted saying: “I don’t know the details of what went on, but it’s completely obvious they aren’t pirates.”

I often don’t agree with you Mr. Putin, but you are right on this one. According to almost any dictionary definition of pirates and piracy around the world, pirates are individuals who brandish potentially lethal weapons to commit illegal violence at sea.

What we are talking about here, by accounts published or broadcast by even the most conservative of media outlets in Canada and other countries, is a situation that unfolded when two Greenpeace activists from the group’s ship Arctic Sunrise climbed an Russian oil rig in Arctic waters to draw attention to the potential dangerous of deep sea drilling in the Arctic. First those two were arrested and a day later, Russian Coast Guard commandos descended on the Greenpeace ship and arrested the rest.

Now I want to say a few things in anticipation of some of the comments this post is sure to get from those who might very well say something like: ‘Well what were they doing there? It serves them right.’ I’ve already heard some of this from hardliners when it comes to anyone who commits an act of civil disobedience to draw public attention to an issue.

As a journalist who covered environmental issues fulltime for the late great St. Catharines Standard during the 1980s and 90s, I also became somewhat of a veteran of covering Greenpeace protests along the Niagara River where, at the time, chemical poisons like dioxin, PCBs, chorobenzenes and mirex, were flushing relatively freely into that great river and Lake Ontario from chemical-manufacturing and dumps in Niagara County, New York.

While groups like Pollution Probe in Toronto and Operation Clean in Niagara-on-the-Lake spent more time pushing out media releases and reports on the problem, and trying to fight these polluters, who could afford so much more of an army of lawyers and bought-and-paid-for “expert” witnesses in court, Greenpeace would go out there and do their civil disobedience thing which involved, climbing down the walls of the Niagara River Gorge, right next to the Horseshoe Falls and unfurling giant protest banners for all to read, or trying to plug up the effluent pipes to the river from companies like Hooker/Occidental Chemical.

Greenpeace knew back then, and it has always known, that its front-line activists might likely be arrested and thrown in jail, possibly for no more than trespassing or stunting charges for its demonstrations, that were always peaceful and never had anything to do with violence or damaging property. It had lawyers on hand and funding from donors around the world to pay for court appearances and fines.

Now for those of you out there that see any kind of civil disobedience activity as something that should be punishable by doing hard time in prison, let me remind all that if it were not for people who committed acts of civil disobedience and put their necks on the line over the centuries, we might not have the system of democracy and freedoms that we have on this continent and other developed nations of the world today. It is all well and good to sit back now and pick and choose those we might cheer or jeer for engaging in acts of protests against the governments of the day, but we would not even be in the position of choosing without being jailed ourselves if it were not for those who engaged in brave acts of protest before us.

Finally, it is sad to say that it often takes groups like Greenpeace, that engage in acts of civil disobedience, to draw the mainstream media’s attention to an issue. Other groups like Pollution Probe or the late great Operation Clean or whatever, can produce the best reports in the world on threats to the air, water, etc. that keep us alive, and they hardly get as much coverage as some Greenpeace activists scaling some tall or hard to get at place to lay down a banner and keep it there until someone pulls them and it down. That is just the way it is, and perhaps some of you out there who might argue that there are other ways of raising awareness about these issues, might give this some thought.

So here we go. We have decent, gentle, non-violent people like Paul Ruzycki from our Niagara’s Port Colborne, Ontario in jail right now, held up on ridiculous charges of piracy, when any charges laid against them should have been a lot less.

Unfortunately, we can not count on the Stephen Harper government of Canada speaking out for Paul or any of the others since Harper is in cahoots with Russia and other countries in oil-related exploitation and in exploiting opportunities to do deep-well drilling in the Arctic now that, quite ironically, the ice areas are melting in an age of global warming and climate change.

But there will, of course, be a bunch whot respond to this post and others who don’t give a flying fig about this issue. I would be willing to bet that most of them are over the age of 60 and care more about themselves than any children or grandchildren they may have that will live with the consequences of further oil exploitation and climate change.

I am willing to ask who many of them would pay the least bit of attention to deep-water drilling for oil or climate change issues (an international United Nations panel of scientists just released a major report on climate change and it got less coverage in the mainstream media than the Michael Jackson trial) if it were not for groups like Greenpeace that engage in civil disobedience acts to draw attention to these issues?

Now Niagara At Large leaves you with a plea from Greenpeace Canada and Greenpeace International to help these people held hostage for caring about the planet and an equal plea for you to sign a petition, a link for which you will find below.

On September 18, a small group of Greenpeace International activists approached the Gazprom Prirazlomnaya oil platform, in the Pechora Sea off the Russian coast, to engage in a peaceful protest of Arctic oil drilling. Two activists were detained and held overnight on a Russian Coast Guard vessel.

The following day, September 19, the Russian Coast Guard illegally boarded the Greenpeace International ship Arctic Sunrise while in international waters. All 30 members of the crew were held under armed guard for 5 days as the ship was towed to the port of Murmansk. Upon arrival, the activists were taken from the ship and held by authorities on land.

On September 26th, 28 of our activists, along with a photographer and videographer who were documenting the action, appeared at a preliminary court hearing in Murmansk, where most of them were remanded in custody for two months, facing investigation for possible piracy. We are demanding the immediate release of all activists, our ship, and an end to offshore oil drilling in the Arctic for good.

To learn more and to sign a petition, urging Russia to free the these Greenpeace people click on http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/arctic-impacts/free-our-activists/ .

(Niagara At Large now invites you to express your views on this issue and NAL encourages you to sign the petition. We accept all views as long as you have the courage the Greenpeace activists did to put your name on the line with your comment. Anyone who doesn’t won’t be posted.)