Russia blasts Netherlands over unanswered calls to tackle Arctic Sunrise activities
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has lashed out at the Netherlands for its failure to curb the activity of the Dutch-flagged 'Arctic Sunrise' Greenpeace vessel, following Amsterdam’s announcement that it’s taking legal action against Moscow.
On Friday, the Netherlands’
signaled it was taking Russia to an international maritime
dispute court to challenge the legality of “Arctic
Sunrise” seizure by Russia’s law enforcers. The Dutch Foreign
Minister Frans Timmermans also said
that he would use his
diplomatic channels to try and get the 30 detained Greenpeace
activists free.
Moscow slammed the Netherlands for not having intervened in the situation earlier.
“Over the last year and a half the Russian side made repeated attempts to contact their Dutch counterparts to intervene in the vessel’s illegal activities”, Russian Foreign Ministry deputy head Aleksey Meshkov told RIA Novosti on Saturday. “Unfortunately, this was not done. Therefore we have significantly more questions for the Dutch side than they can have for us.”
Greenpeace International has meanwhile applauded the news of the Netherlands planning to file a suit at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, based in Hamburg, Germany.
"International legal experts have uniformly described the
piracy charges against the Greenpeace International activists and
the freelance photographer and videographer as baseless. While we
hope that the Russian prosecutor and courts come to the same
conclusion well before these international proceedings are
concluded, and the defendants are released, the Dutch legal
action sends a strong political signal and gives us hope that
justice will prevail,” Greenpeace International’s General
Counsel Jasper Teulings said.
More than 1,500 people marched to the Russian embassy in
Helsinki, Finland on Saturday to rally in support of the arrested
Greenpeace activists, which include a Finnish citizen. From the
beginning, the organizers made it clear they would not tolerate
Anti-Russian slogans, said one of the protesters as cited by
Gazeta.ru adding that the rally is aimed against the illegality
of Gazprom’s activity in the Arctic.
The Arctic Sunrise approached the Prirazlomnaya oil rig on
September 18, despite orders from the Russian Border Guard
Service not to do so. Several activists then attempted to climb
up the oil-platform, which is the first commercial offshore oil
well in the Arctic.
Artur Akopov, the chief manager on board the Prirazlomnaya rig at the time Greenpeace activists attempted to scale it sides, told RT's Maria Finoshina that the activists posed a threat to the structure’s safety.
“They posed a minor threat until they attempted to board the platform and that we have to prevent by all possible means because they could damage equipment and sabotage our work. This rig is a place of extreme danger,” he said.
Border Guard troops eventually boarded both the rig and the activists’ ship. All of the 30 members of the Greenpeace team were detained and transferred to jail facilities in Murmansk and nearby towns. At the end of September the court charged all of them with piracy and ruled they’d spend two months in pre-trial detention.
Russian investigators say Greenpeace activists’ actions at the rig “posed a real threat” to employees there. The environmental organization demands the release of the crew, arguing the action was non-violent.
