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

by Ben Stewart

  By 2007 about half of the Russian government’s revenue came from oil and gas – double the amount when Putin took power74 – and the Kremlin saw exploitation of the Arctic as key to its hold on power into the future. That year Artur Chilingarov planted his Russian flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole and claimed the Arctic for Moscow, provoking angry responses from other Arctic states.75

  ‘I don’t give a damn what all these foreign politicians … are saying about this,’ said Chilingarov. ‘If someone doesn’t like this, let them go down themselves and try to put something there. Russia must win. Russia has what it takes to win. The Arctic has always been Russian.’76

  EIGHTEEN

  Sini writes a letter to the people across the world who are calling for her freedom.

  The early winter is here in Murmansk, it has snowed a couple of days already. I spend a lot of time looking out through the window. When the sun shines it makes me think of you all supporting us, it makes me happy and makes me smile. When it is snowing, I think about the Arctic, the sea ice, the beautiful nature up here, and it gives me strength, it gives this all meaning … I think about climate change, and I don’t regret it, not even for a second. I would do all this again. All this and much more …

  Sini

  But her cell is beginning to smell.

  In every corner, under the bed, on the shelf above her bunk, there are plastic bags containing uneaten boiled potatoes. When she comes back from the gulyat the stench hits her square in the face. It’s obvious she’s hoarding potatoes, any fool could tell. Popov hasn’t been back yet, but she knows it won’t be long. She’s desperate now, certain she’ll be sent to the kartser the moment the governor does the rounds and sniffs the air in her cell. And so it is that one morning, just before a scheduled meeting with her lawyer, Sini scurries around the room pulling potatoes from bags and filling her pockets with them.

  A guard opens the door and leads her down the corridor to the meeting room. Sini shuffles into a seat opposite her lawyer, Larisa, a provincial woman with a loud mouth and a garish trademark green synthetic top embroidered with golden dragons. She has already demonstrated great courage in her constant efforts to get Sini the food she needs.

  ‘How are you?’ she says.

  ‘Larisa, I need you to help me.’

  ‘I’m trying Sini, we’re all doing our best.’

  ‘No, I mean with something special. I need you to do something right now.’

  ‘What’s wrong Sini?’

  ‘The head of the prison, he’s crazy. He hates me.’

  The guard is standing by the door, staring into the middle distance.

  ‘Why does he hate you?’

  ‘Because … because I don’t eat all of his potatoes.’

  ‘He hates you for that?’

  ‘He went crazy, I think he wants to put me in a punishment cell. I need you to help me.’

  ‘How?’

  Sini eyes the guard then slowly, silently, she draws a potato from her pocket and holds it under the table. ‘Please, take this. Take it out with you when you leave.’

  Larisa’s forehead scrunches up. ‘Take what?’

  ‘I’m holding it now.’

  Larisa narrows her eyes then feels for Sini’s hand under the table. Her fingers explore the contents of Sini’s palm, a confused expression breaks over her face then suddenly she jerks her hand away and pushes her chair back.

  ‘Sini,’ she whispers.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You want me to smuggle potatoes out of the prison?’

  Sini nods urgently. ‘Yes, exactly.’

  ‘Sini, I can’t. If they caught me I’d be in big trouble. We both would. I’d be thrown off the case. I’d lose my licence.’

  ‘So you can’t do it?’

  ‘No, Sini. I can’t.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Smuggle potatoes? No. I can’t.’

  Sini slides the potato back into her pocket. ‘Okay,’ she says, trying to smile but wiping a tear from her cheek. ‘I understand.’

  The legal team has lodged appeals against the continued detention of the Arctic 30. The activists know the hearings are imminent, but none of them holds out hope that they’ll be freed. ‘Appeals don’t work,’ says Vitaly, Dima’s cellmate. ‘There’s no such thing as an appeal. If they decide they’re going to keep you, they keep you. If they decide to let you go, they just let you go.’

  Roman’s appeal is the day before his birthday. It’s three weeks since the ship was raided and he’s hoping for a present in the form of justice but, as soon as he sees the face of the judge, he understands everything. The man’s face is frozen. Roman’s lawyer tells him that the judge has a pre-printed text to read out when the time comes to deliver the verdict. He just needs to put down the name of the defendant, because everything has already been decided.

  Roman is not at court, instead he is in a cell in SIZO-1 watching the hearing through a video conference link. After the evidence has been presented, the judge declares that he will now retire to carefully consider the merits of this complicated case. He orders the courtroom to be vacated. Then something odd happens. Everybody leaves the court so only the judge is left, but they forget to switch Roman off. So he’s sitting there looking up at the judge. The man is supposed to be deliberating, thinking about what decision to make. But instead he clambers up onto his dais and swings his legs like a child in a playground. Then he jumps down, crosses the empty courtroom and collapses into the prosecutor’s chair. He spins himself around then leaps up and falls into the defence lawyer’s chair, spins around again, then sits down on a bench in the public gallery and takes off his gown. He sits silently for a moment, fiddling with the collar of the gown, then he glances up at the screen above his head. Roman is looking down on him with vague, perplexed amusement. The judge brings a hand to his mouth and cries, ‘Dermo!’ – ‘Shit!’ – then jumps up and presses a button. The screen goes blank.

  At the start of Kruso’s hearing the judge accidentally starts reading out the judgement instead of the indictment, before the evidence is even presented. The defence makes a challenge against the judge, alleging she’s biased. The judge goes away to consider the challenge against herself, comes back, declares that after careful consideration she’s concluded that she is in fact not biased, that she was merely reading out preparatory notes for the ruling, and that therefore her impartiality is not in question.

  As Phil walks into the courtroom he slips a hand into his pocket and draws out a matchbox. The guards push him into the cage and lock the door. Phil looks around, anxious for sight of a familiar face. He spots one of the Greenpeace support crew – someone who must remain anonymous, so we’ll call her Mona. She stands on her toes and cranes her neck so she can see Phil over the cluster of photographers surrounding the cage. Their eyes meet, Mona nods and Phil nods back. She slips a cigarette from a packet and sticks it between her lips then shakes a matchbox and sniffs. One of the photographers steps back and examines the back of his camera, scrolling through pictures, and Mona slips into the empty space and thrusts a hand between the bars. Phil clasps it and shakes it firmly, a guard breaks through the photographers and pushes Mona back, snatching the cigarette from her mouth and remonstrating in Russian. Mona shrugs.

  ‘Izvinite,’ she mumbles. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Ne kurit.’ – ‘No smoking.’

  Mona holds up an apologetic hand and walks out of the courtroom, whistling to herself and shaking Phil’s matchbox.

  Phil’s appeal is rejected and he’s taken from the court in an avtozak. Kieron is with him, he’s just had his appeal rejected as well. For both of them the trip to court was pointless, apart from the matchbox. That camera card was sitting in Phil’s boot for weeks and now, finally, he’s got it out of jail. But he’s worried he was spotted. If someone finds that matchbox on Mona, they’ll both be in a whole lot of bother.

  ‘Hey, Phil.’

  He turns to Kieron. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I t
hink I’m gonna propose to Nancy. If I get a phone call, I mean. I think I’m gonna ask her to marry me.’

  ‘You’re gonna propose?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘To your girlfriend?’

  ‘Jesus, Phil. Of course to my girlfriend. Who else?’

  Silence. Phil sniffs. He doesn’t want to say it, but he thinks it’s a bad idea. He thinks Kieron should wait until he gets out of jail. If you do it over the telephone then Nancy can’t say no, he thinks. You can’t say no to someone who’s in jail, so even if it goes well and you hear the right thing back, then later you’ll have to deal with the paranoia. Turma racing. You’re going to start thinking she only said yes because she didn’t dare say no. So then the paranoia’s going to build in your head, going round and round, and even though you’re engaged you’ll start thinking she’s going to find a quiet moment to say, ‘You know what, I’ve had second thoughts.’

  But Phil doesn’t say any of this to Kieron. His friend looks so happy just thinking about asking Nancy to marry him. So Phil nods and says, ‘Yeah nice one. I mean, absence makes the heart grow fonder.’ And that’s the end of the conversation.

  That afternoon Mona hands the camera card to Fabien Rondal. He uploads the footage onto a file-hosting site then he calls Mads Christensen on what he hopes is a secure line and tells him where to find it. The Danish campaign chief downloads the file, Rondal wipes it at his end and destroys the memory card. The campaign now has the footage for the hearing before the international court. Operation Extraction is complete. Mona strikes a match and lights a cigarette.

  Day after day the Sunrise crew are taken to the courthouse to be told they must stay in jail. For Denis the experience of standing before the world’s media in a cage in a Russian courtroom is weighted with irony. Until recently it was him wielding the camera, taking some of the most widely published photographs at the big political prosecutions. He recognises a lot of the journalists, some of them wave at him. He’s surprised to see a friend from Time magazine there, but it’s just more proof that his case is huge abroad.

  On the second Friday of the hearings, it’s Alex’s turn. She’s wearing her purple ski jacket and glasses, and as the verdict is translated she brings her hand up to her face to cover her mouth as her eyes fill with tears. Her father Cliff is watching live via the Internet. ‘And that was the worst moment for us, when she was denied bail and she broke down a bit. That upset me. We couldn’t believe what was happening. It was shock. Emotional shock.’

  At Sini’s appeal she holds up a small white postcard, on which she has written the words, ‘THANK YOU FOR ALL THE SUPPORT’. She signs it with a heart. That evening she sits on her bunk and writes a letter to Fabien Rondal’s ground team.

  SIZO-1, cell 217

  The court hearing was just like a theatre play where everyone (except me) followed the already set and decided manuscript. The question that has been bothering me the whole time of our arrest and all the investigations is that no one has been asking why I did it.

  Climate change is the biggest and at the same time the most denied threat the world as we know is facing. And the dirty oil companies are taking advantage of the effects of climate change that are already visible … The oil companies are let to do whatever they want in the Arctic, that is said to belong only to some of the nations, but that actually is all ours since our future depends on it … There is no time to wait for international climate negotiations that practically lead nowhere … The oil companies are going to Arctic now and they are threatening the future of the Arctic, the climate and coming generations now, as I sit in this bloody prison.

  I go and fight for the Arctic because I see no other possibility in the current situation. And as a person being from the Arctic I see that that is where my responsibility for the climate battle is.

  I do not regret what I did. And if we went back in time, knowing about what our action would lead into, I would still do the same again.

  Climate change is the one that doesn’t forgive. And Arctic is what we cannot get back if we lose it. Justice comes and goes, freedom is there always if you just decide so.

  Sini.

  NINETEEN

  The appeals go on, the process grinds forward, always with a sense of impending, inevitable rejection. But the Kremlin does not only have the thirty in its sights.

  Mads Christensen has sources telling him an FSB raid on the Greenpeace office in Moscow is a real possibility. Bank accounts will be shut down. Staff will be arrested and charged with complicity in the action. Any doubts about the veracity of the information fall away when the rental contract on the Russian office is cancelled with just three weeks’ notice. It’s a typical tactic familiar to Russian opposition groups. A decision is taken to start pulling out the foreign staff in Russia, even Daniel Simons, who’s leading the legal response team in Murmansk.

  In Moscow, on the balcony outside the Dance Hall, the head of Greenpeace Russia, Sergey Tsyplenkov, tells Laura Kenyon – a Canadian campaigner – what the sources are saying. The Investigative Committee is compiling a list of people it will potentially be investigating, and he assumes her name is on it. It’s too risky for her to stay here. As a foreigner she’s exposed. It’s time to go.

  Simons and Kenyon leave Russia. Everybody else waits for the Kremlin to make its move.

  The following day nothing happens, but rumours of an assault on the Moscow office are swirling like confetti. Now sources inside the Russian government are warning that the crackdown is imminent, that the office will soon be shut down and staff arrested. Instead of bringing this saga to a close, it seems there is an appetite in the Kremlin to escalate.

  Late in the afternoon Mads Christensen taps the microphone on the video link between London and Copenhagen. He asks Ben Ayliffe and the head of the media team to get on a secure line.

  ‘Look,’ he says, ‘we’ve got a source, a really good one, someone who knows what’s happening at the top level. I don’t want to say who this is, and you don’t need to know, but they’re telling us it’s going to happen. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. Office shut down, bank account closed, staff picked up by the FSB. We need to do something. Something that makes them stop and think. We need to make some kind of intervention so the PR hit they think they’ll take – inside and outside Russia – makes the FSB think again.’

  Ben Ayliffe and his colleague lock themselves in a room with a bag of pastries and a pot of coffee and thrash through ideas. Ayliffe leads the team organising demonstrations, vigils and petitions around the world. He’s a twelve-year Greenpeace veteran with a passion for cricket, bird watching and shutting down polluting infrastructure using peaceful direct action. It should have been him on that ship but he hurt his back and Dima took his place.

  Just over an hour later they have something for Christensen. It’s a draft of a letter to Putin from Kumi Naidoo. Not much in itself, but this letter has a twist. It includes a serious offer by Naidoo to swap places with the Arctic 30.

  Unlike the world leaders with whom you are more used to convening, I would not carry with me the power and influence of a government. Instead, I would come equipped only as the representative of millions of people around the world, many of them Russian, whose fervent wish is to see an early end to the continued imprisonment of the brave and peaceful men and women held in Murmansk.

  Were our friends to be released on bail, I offer myself as security against the promise that the Greenpeace International activists will answer for their peaceful protest according to the criminal code of Russia.

  I appreciate the risk that my coming to Russia entails. Last year I was part of a peaceful protest that was identical in almost every respect to the one carried out by my colleagues. In coming to Russia, I do not expect to share their fate, but it is a risk I am willing to take in order to find with you that common understanding.

  ‘But we need to send it tonight,’ Ayliffe tells Mads Christensen. ‘Moscow is four hours ahead and we need to hit the morning news there
.’

  Christensen rings off and reads through the letter, then he calls Kumi Naidoo.

  ‘Mads.’

  ‘Kumi, hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  Silence.

  ‘Mads, are you there?’

  ‘Yeah. So, er … we have an idea.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, we’re trying to find something so morally powerful that the FSB can’t shut us down, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And we think … we think maybe you could offer yourself up. In exchange for the others, I mean. It would sort of be sacrificing you on the altar of saving the Russian office. I mean, I know it’s crazy, but what do you think?’

  And Naidoo comes straight back. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure about this? Because once you say yes, they could call our bluff. You know that?’

  ‘It’s fine, let’s do it. I’ve actually been thinking the same thing for a while. I’ve been playing it over in my head for a week. I’m the boss, the buck stops with me. If I could swap with those guys in jail I would. Let’s do it.’

  Kumi Naidoo has been jailed before. When he was fifteen years old he joined the national student uprising against apartheid rule in South Africa. Kids across the country were walking out of school and taking to the streets to protest racist rule. Naidoo became a leader of the uprising, he was jailed, released, and forced to live underground. Eventually he had no choice but to leave the country. His offer to take the place of the thirty is a serious one.

  The letter to Putin is delivered to the Russian ambassador in The Hague, the campaign sends out a press release, and the next morning it’s a major story in the Russian media. Putin’s spokesman says the President has read the letter but is powerless to intervene in Russia’s independent judicial system. Around the world – but most importantly in Russia – it’s known that Kumi Naidoo has made a personal offer to Putin to take the place of the Arctic 30.