Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg: The Extraordinary Story of the Arctic 30

by Ben Stewart

  He says to the guard, ‘See ya, mate! Depeche Mode number one! Thanks!’

  The guard turns around. He looks confused, surprised that a prisoner has actually smiled at him and said goodbye and thank you. He grins at Frank and says, ‘Good luck, good luck my friend. Good luck, my Depeche Mode friend.’

  That night Frank gets his Valium. He takes one and saves the other, and from then on he takes one every night, to get through the road.

  The Arctic Sunrise near the Prirazlomnaya oil rig, on its way to protest against offshore drilling in the Arctic.

  Dimitri ‘Dima’ Litvinov. Born in Russia, raised in internal exile in Siberia, educated in America, he lived with his family in Sweden before sailing to the Arctic.

  The 61-year-old American captain Pete Willcox on the bridge of the Arctic Sunrise, four days before the protest.

  Frank Hewetson (yellow helmet) keeps watch as Sini Saarela climbs the side of the Gazprom-owned oil platform. Kruso Weber, hanging above her, is already attracting spray from a water cannon.

  A Russian coastguard officer pulls a gun on the protesters.

  Phil Ball filmed the first soldier rappelling onto the deck of the Sunrise. He later hid the camera card in the sole of his boot.

  Dima is pushed to the ground outside the bridge door, minutes after soldiers started landing on the Arctic Sunrise.

  Footage shot by Phil Ball of the Russian security services seizing the ship at gunpoint.

  British activist Frank Hewetson at Leninsky District Court in Murmansk, where he was told he would be jailed while the authorities investigated an allegation of piracy.

  Sini Saarela from Finland at her appeal hearing in Murmansk.

  A smuggled image of one of the cells at Murmansk SIZO-1, where the Arctic 30 were held.

  The outside wall of Murmansk SIZO-1. At night the windows would be connected by ropes that formed the doroga – the road.

  Another view of the prison’s exterior.

  Mads Christensen with his wife and colleague Nora at the Global Day of Solidarity in Copenhagen.

  Two weeks after the ship was raided, 1,300 people marched past the Russian Embassy in Helskinki, one of 135 protests held in forty-five countries on the same day.

  British activist Phil Ball at his bail hearing in St Petersburg. Sewed into his T-shirt are the words SAVE THE ARCTIC! in Russian.

  Ben Stewart and Ben Ayliffe watching the live feed from court on the second day of the bail hearings.

  Sini Saarela, Alex Harris and Camila Speziale.

  Group shot of the Arctic 30. They are, from bottom left: Denis Sinyakov, Kieron Bryan, Roman Dolgov, Mannes Ubels, Frank Hewetson, Phil Ball, Ana Paula Maciel. From upper left: Iain Rogers, Sini Saarela, Camila Speziale, Gizem Akhan, Alex Harris, Cristian D’Alessandro, Hernan Orsi, Pete Willcox, Anne Mie Jensen, Faiza Oulahsen, Jon Beauchamp, David Haussmann, Marco ‘Kruso’ Weber, Ruslan Yakushev, Colin Russell, Paul Ruzycki, Alexandre ‘Po’ Paul, Dima Litvinov, Anthony Perrett. Missing are Francesco Pisanu, Andrey Allakhverdov, Tomasz Dziemianczuk and Katya Zaspa.

  Pete Willcox with his wife Maggy. Before sailing for the Prirazlomnaya Pete sent Maggy a postcard, saying: ‘If the Russians keep their sense of humour, I think this is going to be a fun action.’

  SIXTEEN

  It’s burning a hole in his heel.

  He knows it would be shown by television stations across the world, it could keep him and his friends in the news, unforgotten. But the memory card with the footage of commandos raiding the Sunrise is still sitting in that little slit in the sole of his shoe. Every day Phil shuffles to the gulyat in his boots without laces, contemplating how the hell he’s going to get the damn thing out of SIZO-1.

  It feels like a spy thriller, having this thing in his shoe. A clichéd plot device from a Hollywood movie. But for Phil Ball – a father-of-three from Oxford – it’s real. He’s smuggled the footage into a Russian prison, and now he has to get it out of here. His lawyer has just told him the Dutch government is taking Russia to ITLOS – the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea – and the hearing in Hamburg is coming up soon. And Daniel Simons and his team have lodged appeals with the local court against their detention.

  Phil knows the lawyers need the contents of his boot. It’s obvious that footage would help them, they don’t have to tell him that. If the judges at the international court could see what happened on the Sunrise, it could really change things, people would understand what happened, they’d see the activists with their arms raised, the aggressive takeover of a ship by masked soldiers.

  So now it’s breathing down his neck. He knows he’s got to get the footage out before the hearing at the international court. It’s vital. This is gold dust. There are people who look like pirates on that film he shot, and it’s not the Sunrise crew. But it’s in his shoe. He’s in jail and it’s in his fucking shoe.

  Frank starts a diary in a small green exercise book. On the cover and the inside pages he sticks pictures of his family. The prisoners aren’t allowed glue, so he uses dried toothpaste instead.

  4th October

  Sometime b4 10am I got summoned downstairs (escorted by 5 guards) to see Pavel my lawyer, 2 investigators + interpreter. I got a bit pissed when some mention was made of possible green vegetation drugs found in Doctors bag/cabin. I insisted on writing down that this was a cheap attempt to damage image of GP and besides the ship is Dutch + in international waters. Mind you the head investigator did offer to supply me with printed results of Premiership football. Had stroll around the Pig Pen and talked to Capt Pete over the wall. Also involved in ciggie packet transfer across cage between inmates. Guards got angry.

  [later …] Was just taken across the yard to the Director of prison’s office. The Director went on about tapping and Morse code between prisoners (ours) which I dismissed out of hand, mentioning no one had used such code since passing maritime college 20 yrs ago. On reflection I think he may have been referring to Postman Pat and his black and white cat [the road] during the quiet hours. I’m sure it’s common knowledge.

  For the first week Sini Saarela, the Finnish climber who scaled the side of the oil rig, has lived almost entirely on bread. As a vegan she can eat none of the meals she’s served through the hatch in her cell door, and the prison authorities are refusing to give her food she can eat. The guards say it’s her problem if she doesn’t want to eat meat or cheese. Sini’s lawyer fights them hard on it and eventually they relent. Now every mealtime she gets three big cold boiled potatoes, one carrot and one slice of beetroot.

  At first she’s grateful, but soon she has to start throwing potatoes away. There are too many of them. She tries to eat all the potatoes but they’re huge. Nine big cold potatoes every day. She gets through four, maybe five, but the rest pile up in her waste bin.

  One night Popov, the prison governor, bursts into her cell to conduct an inspection. Immediately the governor spots the potatoes in her bin. His face contorts and he starts shouting at Sini, pointing at the waste bin and screaming in Russian.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Sini. ‘I don’t understand you.’

  Popov comes closer so the tip of his nose is nearly touching Sini’s face. Specks of spittle are flying from his lips and spattering Sini’s cheeks as he screams at her. His face is red. Thick green veins are standing out on his temples. He’s standing on his toes to compensate for his short stature. Then he falls silent, screws up his mouth, looks her up and down and storms out.

  Sini knows what he was saying. It was about the food in the waste bin. He was so angry. She sits on the edge of her bunk, shaken.

  Popov doesn’t usually make the cell checks so she thinks she probably won’t see him again for a while. But the next morning the door swings open and Popov is standing in front of her, and a moment later he’s pointing at the potatoes in the bin and screaming. Sini has never seen anyone so angry. Popov is shaking. He comes close to her, maybe twenty centimetres from her face, shouting and pointing at the waste bin, his moust
ache twisting and jumping. He’s furious. Sini’s terrified. She can’t understand what he’s saying, but she thinks he’s threatening to throw her in the punishment cell.

  Popov exhausts his fury and leaves. A shaken Sini sits on her bed and contemplates what has just happened. She can’t eat all the food, it’s impossible, the guards are delivering industrial quantities of potatoes and bread and almost nothing else. She looks around the cell then jumps up. She gathers all of the bread and takes it to the window. It doesn’t open but there’s a little hole for ventilation that opens sideways, enough space for a bird to poke its beak through. Sometimes the pigeons come into the space between the window and the bars so Sini crumbles the bread and leaves it there and watches the pigeons eating it. Okay, good, she can get rid of the bread. Then she grabs the bin, reaches in, pulls out a potato and drops it into the gap behind the bars. But the cold potato, this huge white hard potato, this potato that was boiled a week ago and kept in a fridge, is left untouched by the pigeons of Murmansk.

  Frank Hewetson’s diary

  5th October Saturday

  Another big sleep. I managed to filter out the wall banging, pipe tapping and shouting thru window. I’m only in touch with [Dutch chief engineer] Mannes now. He is in 410 and I’m in 320. Previously 305. Had a brief chat with Anthony over the wall. They all heard about the hospital trip and were a bit concerned. He reckons he has lost 9 kilos. Roman says he’s lost even more. I get the impression weekends are slower in jail.

  While Sini is trying to smuggle food out of her cell, Fabien Rondal – the leader of the ground team in Murmansk – is trying to smuggle letters in.

  The rules of SIZO-1 dictate that letters to the prisoners must be posted to the jail and read by a censor before being given to the activists. Letters and packages posted from abroad take weeks to arrive in prisoners’ cells, and even then the contents have been searched, sliced, scribbled on and blacked out. Rondal makes it a priority to short-circuit the system and open a communication channel between SIZO-1 and the outside world.

  It seems impossible, but if anybody can do it, it’s the 38-year-old Belgian. He comes from a family of opera fanatics, his brother is a professional singer, but Rondal’s only brush with music was as a roadie for rock bands. He might once have had boy-band good looks but now his face is bearded. He speaks with a French accent and is a veteran logistics co-ordinator with a reputation for organisation and imagination. Four years earlier he led the team that evaded security at a summit of world leaders in Brussels by hiring limousines and posing as presidents and prime ministers before launching a protest on the red carpet in front of a bank of TV cameras. Three weeks before the Prirazlomnaya action, under cover of darkness, he installed two remote-controlled banners on the winner’s podium at the Shell-sponsored Belgian Formula 1 grand prix circuit. Days later, as Sebastian Vettel was presented with the victor’s trophy in front of a television audience of tens of millions, Rondal sent a signal from a mobile phone that activated the banners, so the German national anthem was accompanied by the sight of yellow fabric rising from the podium brandishing the message ‘SAVE THE ARCTIC’.

  So it comes as little surprise to his colleagues when Fabien Rondal finds somebody who can circumvent the censor and carry letters into SIZO-1. Soon, messages from family and friends – and from strangers who have read about the Arctic 30 – are pouring into the prison under the noses of the guards. The activists then have to hope the guards don’t spot that the letters they’re seeing in their searches have not been through the system. If they do, the punishment cell awaits.

  Rondal promises he’ll never reveal the identity of his smuggler, so for the purposes of this story we’ll call him Mr Babinski.

  The Babinski channel runs both ways, allowing the thirty to get letters out to their families, bypassing the weeks-long process operated by the censor. As soon as Mr Babinski gives Rondal the letters from the prisoners, the Belgian scans them, destroys the hard copies (in case of an FSB raid) then emails the letters to relatives and friends, who find messages from their captive loved ones dropping into their inboxes.

  For Sini, the letters landing in her cell give meaning to her incarceration. They show her she’s not alone. She gets letters from people she’s never met, people who tell her they wish they could come to Russia and take her place in prison for a day so she could be free. And Sini thinks, I wish all the activists who are in prison because they fought for a better world could have the same support we have.

  But she’s still accumulating potatoes.

  Nine new ones every day. She eats four, sometimes five, but that means just as many are being added to her uneaten stash. Popov hasn’t returned yet, but it’s only a matter of time before he conducts the evening cell check. And when he does, he’s going to go crazy. Sini has tried everything. The pigeons won’t touch them, and she’s tried flushing them down the toilet but she almost blocked the pipe, and she won’t be risking that again. This guy Popov is going to be really angry if she breaks the toilet system. She’ll be sent to the cooler or moved to a different cell, and she really wants to stay in this cell because Camila and Alex are on the same corridor. So she starts hiding the potatoes in plastic bags. She ties the tops of the bags and hides them under the bed, behind the toilet, behind the clothes on her shelf. Her cell is full of contraband potatoes.

  Two floors above her, Dima pens a letter to his friends in Stockholm.

  I can only speak for myself, since I am isolated from my comrades. But from my perspective, if our action and the follow-up we are living through will lead to the undermining of the Arctic oil companies, and to get people all around the world, and especially in Russia, to understand the reality and urgency of the crisis we are attempting to avert – well that’s well worth a few weeks or months or (sigh) even years behind bars. I am hoping that I can count on you, my friends and colleagues, to continue the campaign while the 30 of us are ‘enjoying’ this forced vacation.

  As well as getting letters to and from the thirty, Fabien Rondal’s team is using legal channels to get supplies to the crew. Alex is delving through her second delivery, pulling out desiccated fruit and sliced-up cheese, when she comes across a curious object. She holds it up, examining it quizzically. She turns it in her hands. It’s metal with a handle and a stainless steel bar in a tight curl, and a plug at the end. Is this a hair curler? She plugs it in and examines it from every angle. It’s a fucking hair curler. She tosses it back into the bag. Really? I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, I’m in jail, there are things I need right now, lots of things, but curling tongs aren’t even near the top of the list.

  The next day at the gulyat everyone is buzzing from the latest delivery of supplies, shouting over the wall, announcing to the other women what they’ve been sent.

  ‘I got nuts! Oh wow, I never knew nuts tasted so good. When I get out of here I’m going to eat more nuts.’

  ‘I got an orange.’

  ‘I got beans!’ Sini cries. ‘I’m so excited I got beans. I ate them all at once, they were great.’

  ‘I got peanuts and fruit,’ shouts Camila. ‘And I got a T-shirt. It’s got handprints on the front, it was made by my family, all my sisters and brothers. I’ve been wearing it all morning, it makes me feel like they’re here with me. I’m going to wear it to court, when we have the appeal.’

  And Alex says, ‘Well, I’m annoyed. Out of all the things they could have sent me, I get curling tongs. I mean, how impractical is that?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ says Faiza. ‘They sent you curling tongs?’

  And Sini says, ‘Alex, what do they look like?’

  ‘What do you think they look like? They look like curling tongs. A metal bar curled up, a wire, a plug. Curling tongs.’

  ‘Alex, I think that’s a water boiler. You use it to make tea.’

  Silence.

  ‘Oh.’

  Every day Phil’s cell is searched, his clothes are searched,
he can’t hold the camera card in his boot for ever, he needs to get it out. He thinks about handing it to Mr Babinski, but he doesn’t yet know if he can trust him. It’s one thing to lose a letter, but there’s only one copy of this film in existence, and it could help him and his friends get out of here. And maybe Babinski has to pass through a metal detector to get out of SIZO-1. Instead Phil writes a note to Fabien Rondal and drops it into the Babinski channel.

  When Thomas the Tank Engine’s friend Harold dropped by for tea on the 19th, I was there with a go-pro. If you want to see it, let me know how, who, etc. There is no backup. Really very important. Please don’t ignore this sentence Fabien. Looks exciting micro SD.

  Why the hell Phil chose to adopt a code dependent on a working knowledge of 1940s British children’s literature, only he can explain. But nevertheless the Belgian Fabien Rondal sends an email to Mads Christensen in Copenhagen with a correct interpretation.

  To me, it means that Phil was the one who filmed the boarding of the ship on Sept 19th. Now it seems to me that Phil is saying that he still has the micro sd card with him now (in the jail?) and that he asks us for advice about what he should do with it.

  Plans for Operation Extraction are laid.

  Phil procures a matchbox. He removes the tray and turns the matches out, then he gets another matchbox tray and cuts the sides off. Then he pushes that piece of card smoothly inside the first matchbox, so now it has a false bottom.

  He starts carrying his matchbox with him wherever he goes in the prison, testing to see if it’s taken from him. He has a matchbox on him at gulyat and at searches, so the guards get used to the fact that he always carries this matchbox. He’s trying to cover every detail, he won’t leave anything to chance. Then he drops a note to Fabien through Mr Babinski.