All seven people who took part in a Greenpeace
protest at Port Taranaki, including actress Lucy Lawless,
have been charged with burglary.
The seven would appear in New Plymouth District Court on
Thursday, police said.
Greenpeace named the six arrested today as Lawless, Mike
Buchanan, Shayne Comino and Raoni Hammer, all of
Christchurch, Shai Nades, of Wellington, and Vivienne Hadlow
of Auckland.
The seventh person arrested, Aucklander Ilai Amir, had left
the protest on Saturday for personal reasons.
A Shell ship, the Noble Discoverer, was meant to leave Port
Taranaki over the weekend on a 6000 nautical mile journey to
the Chukchi Sea, off the coast of Alaska, to drill three
exploratory oil wells.
However, the seven Greenpeace activists boarded it early on
Friday to protest against the planned drilling.
A Greenpeace spokeswoman said the charge of unlawfully being
on a ship as available to police but they had instead chosen
to charge the protesters with the more serious crime of
burglary.
"Greenpeace insists that no property was taken or damaged
during the occupation,'' the spokeswoman said.
Lawless said before being arrested that seven may have been
on the ship "but 133,000 of us came down'', referring to the
organisation's online campaign, in which people sent emails
to Shell executives encouraging them to stop their Arctic
drilling plans.
"We will continue to stand in solidarity with the communities
and species that depend on the Arctic for their very lives
until Shell cancels its plans to drill in this magical world,
and makes the switch to clean, sustainable energy,'' she
said.
"This chapter has ended but the story of the battle to save
the Arctic has just begun.''
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