YABLOKO’s statement, September 25, 2013

Freedom for Greenpeace activists! For environmental safety in the Arctic!

The detention of the activists from the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise by FSB outside of Russia’s territorial waters is a criminal adventure of Russia’s authorities. An absurd accusation of piracy (Assault on a sea-going ship or a river boat with the aim of capturing other people’s property, committed with the use of violence, Article 227 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) indicted to the ecologists, who protested peacefully against the danger of the Arctic pollution, demonstrates the Russia’s authorities’ anti-environmental policy and a panic fear of any protest actions.

To qualify the non-violent protest of the ecologists against the environmentally dangerous Gazprom’s oil production in the Pechora sea as piracy is the travesty of common sense. It is as absurd as the case against the Bolotnaya prisoners brought under the article 212 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on the organisation of mass riots. There’s a direct analogy between these reprisals against the civil society.  The detention of the environmental ship by FSB in the neutral waters can be called the state piracy.

The Russian authorities violate the law: the ecologists are deprived of freedom for more than a week without the court order, they aren’t allowed to meet the lawyers.  The investigation agencies plan to detain the “most active” ecologists, but there are no grounds for the arrest of both more and less “active” suspects.

The YABLOKO party calls the Russian authorities to come to their senses and not to hold Russia up to ridicule and to provide environmental safety of the Arctic not in word but in deed.

YABLOKO demands to stop the criminal prosecution against the ecologists and release them immediately.

Chair of YABLOKO

Sergei Mitrokhin

Chair of YABLOKO’s Green Russia faction

Alexei Yablokov