A Cold Fate: Prison Near the Arctic Circle

 

Sydney-based Briton Alexandra Harris, 27, wrote to her parents recently of her fears of “rotting” in a very cold prison. “Being in prison is like slowly dying,” her letter said. “You literally wish your life away and mark off the days.”  

            — Reuters report about arrest of Greenpeace activists in Russia

Half a world away from Key West, 30 Greenpeace activists rot in Russian jails awaiting trial for their peaceful protest against oil drilling in the Arctic. Conditions are terrible and the charges are for “hooliganism,” a word reminiscent of the old Soviet Union and the same one on which  the Russians arrested the rockers Pussy Riot. The Greenpeace activists, now known as the Arctic 30, could end up in brutal Siberian penal colonies for as long as seven years.

While foreign governments have vigorously protested the arrests and newspapers in other countries have provided daily coverage of the group’s fate, the press and our government have given scant attention to the situation, despite the arrest of two American citizens. This is troubling to long-time Key West resident and well-known local chiropractor Ross Williams who describes one of those arrested – activist Peter Henry Willcox – as his best male friend.

Williams met Peter Wilcox in 1976 when he crewed on a sailing vessel known as the Clearwater, a replica of the sloops that sailed the Hudson in the 18th and 19th centuries.

“The well-known folk singer and activist Pete Seeger and a group of activists got together to build a ship replica and launch an environmental movement to bring awareness to the fact that the river had become so polluted. Huge portions of the Hudson River were biologically dead at that time,” Williams recalled. “It was just a sludge pit. All the industry up and down the river was dumping raw everything right into the river.”

Willcox was one of the very early participants in that effort and got to know Seeger and the others. Later he became one of primary captains of the Clearwater. Williams, who has had a lifelong love of the ocean and the boats that navigate on it, crewed on the Clearwater and traveled with them to the Operation Sail parade during the bicentennial celebration in 1976.

Subsequently Willcox joined Greenpeace. It’s a profound commitment as his recent arrest illustrates.

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, “The foreign prisoners have each been allocated a metal bunk in a small cell occupied by four or five other prisoners, in which there is a washbasin, a cold-water tap, a tepid radiator, a toilet only partly concealed by a low partition, and a table and bench screwed to the floor next to the toilet. This is where they spend 23 hours of the day, where they eat, wash and defecate in close proximity to one another.”

They are imprisoned in Murmansk, where they were arrested, near the Arctic Circle. Temperatures there now hover in the 30s but will go far lower.

Williams describes Willcox as very disciplined and “a little gruff.” He got to know him well because in 1973,  he and Willcox and a small group of men lived for a summer on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, building a 60-foot catamaran.

As a result of his acquaintance with Willcox, Williams became an activist himself, participating in various actions on the Clearwater.

“One was against National Lead, which was a paint company in New Jersey and they were taking barges a couple of miles offshore and dumping a million gallons of raw sulfuric acid sludge into the ocean about every week,” Williams said. “It was killing the fishing grounds so a big coalition of fishermen and the Clearwater and other groups got together to protest. Some of them even chained themselves to the anchors of that barge. That brought in the press.”

Williams spent 1981-82 on the original Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior. He traveled from New York down the East Coast as the group worked to attract public attention. During that trip the boat docked in Key West for a few days. After the ship departed, the group sailed through the Panama Canal and the up the West Coast of the United States conducting campaigns along the way including some against the whaling companies. It was Greenpeace’s actions against whalers that brought the activist organization to public attention.

“Those kinds of direct actions have a tremendous effect,” Williams commented. “They’ve created huge awareness in the public mind. The whole idea of Greenpeace came from the Quakers’ belief that when you see a wrong you owe it the world to bring attention to that wrong. Not to intervene per se but to bear witness.”

While Willcox captained the first Rainbow Warrior that was bombed in New Zealand by the French secret service in 1985, this may be his toughest test yet. Though Williams and his wife Jody Smith Williams are extremely worried about the Arctic 30 and Willcox in particular, he’s confident that his dear friend will endure.

“He was very cognizant of the dangers but that wouldn’t slow him down one bit,” Williams commented. “If he gets out of this, even with a couple of years in jail, he’ll go right back out there. He’s a very steadfast individual. He has very firm core convictions about right and wrong.”

So what can ordinary people do? It’s impossible to get in touch directly and even though Williams and Smith Williams have sent emails through a person in Stockholm, there’s been no verification that any of them have gotten through. Recently Willcox was able to make just a four-minute phone call with his wife, his father and his mother.

Williams feels that it’s urgent to write and call legislators.

“It’s important to post on social media,” he added. “These things create awareness. I think the Russians are using this to create a little bit of notoriety because they’ve lost so much power in the world today. It has nothing to do with anything wrong [the activists] did. There’s no proportionality to this crime or offense.”