The photo above says it all. This was one of dozens of messages attached to a giant FREE THE ARCTIC 30 banner that was held outside the Russian Embassy in central London at the recent mass rally. To the public passing by, the placards bearing the photos and names of the 30 Greenpeace activists currently being detained in Russia, brought home the fact that these were real people doing a really important job. But when you see the ‘dove messages’ from their families and friends, the situation becomes heartbreaking.
Most of the faces on those posters are unfamiliar to me. But I have been on several actions with Phil Ball and I can imagine his kids being tucked up in bed each night and asking their mum, ‘When’s dad coming home?’. From my experiences with Phil I know that he’s totally unflappable. He's the kind of person who uses his very individual sense of humour to cool down tense situations. He’s an activist’s activist. But behind that calm exterior, I wonder how his mind is coping in those very testing circumstances.
When I first heard that the Arctic 30 were going were all being detained, I tried to look on the bright side. “Well,” I thought. “At least they’re being held together and they’ll be able to give each other moral support.” There’s nothing lonelier than being stuck in a cell on your own in a foreign country – let alone when you are caught in the middle of a game of political brinksmanship. But then, during John Sauven’s speech outside the Russian Embassy, he told us that none of the 30 were being allowed to communication with each other and all were being kept in their cells for 23 hours a day. Nothing short of mental torture. Imagine.
The only consolation to all this is that the Save The Arctic campaign has now gone epic. The Arctic 30 and the Save The Arctic campaign is front page news. The whole world can see how insane the dash to extract more carbon-belching fossil fuels really is – and to what lengths the vested interests will go to justify the unjustifiable. As Phil and the rest of the Arctic Sunrise crew face the prospect of trial for piracy in Russia – it’s becoming clearer and clearer to the rest of the world just who the real pirates are.
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