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  • Greenpeace activist wants out

    Jailed activist tells of life in cold cell
    October 27, 2013


    "I prayed for the first time in my life the other day. I prayed for freedom and courage." Photo: AP/Greenpeace

    She spends 23 hours a day in a draughty Russian prison cell, with Arctic blizzards blowing outside, and is allowed to walk outside in ''an outdoor chicken pen'' for just an hour a day. Greenpeace activist Alexandra Harris, a 27-year-old permanent Australian resident and British citizen, has written to her Sydney manager James Lorenz to describe how she passes the time dreaming of running into her family's arms.

    Ms Harris, from Manly, was in a group of 30 - comprising 28 Greenpeace activists, a freelance photographer and a videographer - charged with piracy by Russian authorities after they tried to scale a state-owned oil platform in a protest against drilling in the Arctic last month. On Thursday, Russia's Federal Investigative Committee dropped piracy claims against the group, which includes three Australian residents, but replaced them with hooliganism charges, which carry a jail term of up to seven years, instead of 15 years for piracy.

    Ms Harris passes the time in her Murmansk cell desperately trying to keep her mind occupied. ''I try to keep myself 'busy' with little things like doing the laundry, sweeping the floor and doing exercises,'' she wrote in her first letter to Australia. ''We're allowed to leave our cell and walk for one hour each day. We're locked in what can be described as an outdoor chicken pen [to walk]. It's horrible. But yesterday I saw that someone had scratched 'Save the Arctic' into the wall. It made me laugh.'' Ms Harris said she feared spending winter in the prison, which is inside the Arctic circle. Daily average temperatures for October range from minus six degrees to one degree.
    ''It's very cold now,'' she wrote. ''It snowed last night. The blizzard blew my very poorly insulated window open and I had to sleep wearing my hat. I'm nervous about spending winter here. I have a radiator in my cell but it's the Arctic breeze that makes the place very cold.''

    The Russian Foreign Ministry also said it would not recognise the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in a case mounted by the Netherlands in an attempt to free the activists immediately.
    Source

    Pussy Riot was convicted of hooliganism and it can carry a hefty penalty. Ms Harris is now in a simple detention center in Murmansk. If convicted, she could end up at the Womens Strict-Regime Penal Colony in Mordovia where Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has been incarcerated. Nah. Never happen.
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  • #2
    I wanna say "serves her right". She came from an environment that is very lenient (England and Australia), and ran headfirst into a state that doesn't give a shit. If she was a true believer in her cause, she'd accept her punishment, and become a martyr to the cause. Instead, she realized that she's in way the hell over her head and wants home to mommy.

    Boo freaking hoo
    Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

    Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

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    • #3
      Attached Files

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      • #4
        Can't do the time, don't do the crime.

        And I love what Bigross said "she came from an environment that is very lenient and ran headfirst into a state that doesn't give a shit."

        Welcome to reality sweetheart. The world is a mean and cruel place. It's also cold, but you've figured that out by now.
        “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

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        • #5
          I've always had a way with words.....
          Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

          Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

          Comment


          • #6
            I wonder how does she feel about drilling for heating oil now?

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            • #7
              probably will want a thick fur coat in the near future as well....

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              • #8
                After they go through the motions, she will probably receive a personal pardon with a warning to never ever come back.
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                • #9
                  At which point Greenpeace will hail her as a hero, and she will go right back to her old nonsense, having learning absolutely nothing from her experience, that actions carry with them consequences.
                  Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

                  Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Word is that all 30 GP activists will shortly be moved from Murmansk to St. Petersburg. Still cold, but a bit of an improvement over the sunless Murmansk
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                    • #11
                      You have to admire the Russians in that respect.

                      Prison is indeed Prison not a playground like here in the US. No cable, coffee, etc etc etc.
                      Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.

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                      • #12
                        Greenpeace activist: 'Russian jail was like a time warp'
                        22 November 2013

                        Five Britons arrested by the Russian authorities during a Greenpeace protest in the Arctic have been released from prison on bail. They were among a number of activists and journalists arrested two months ago on board the environmental group's ship, the Arctic Sunrise. One of those to be freed on bail, Frank Hewetson, has spoken exclusively to the BBC's Daniel Sandford about the conditions in the jail in Murmansk. ''It was a time warp...it just felt unreal'', he said.
                        Source

                        Lol. If they thought Murmansk was bad, they should thank their lucky stars that they avoided the prison colony in Archangel.
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