Trial against ship blockers: Environmentalists face five years in prison

Five years in prison for a peaceful protest – that's what 11 defendants face for blocking a gas tanker. On September 23rd, those affected, who come from eight different countries, will have to appear before the criminal court in the Spanish Mediterranean city of Valencia.

In October 2021, 10 activists from the environmental protection organization Greenpeace and the captain of the Greenpeace ship “Esperanza” (Hope) prevented the gas tanker “Merchant” coming from the USA from entering the port of Sagundo for hours. To prevent the police from clearing the “Esperanza” and driving away, one of the activists hung himself from the anchor chain, where he only gave up after 12 hours.

The blocked ship had 138,000 cubic meters of gas on board. With this campaign, Greenpeace not only protested against the use of fossil fuels in general. In this case it was even about a gas that is particularly harmful to the climate and the environment. It came from the fracking fields in North America - fracking is a particularly brutal mining process that, among other things, contaminates groundwater. The defendants are accused of “public sedition”.

The legal spokeswoman for the environmental protection organization, Ines Díez, sees the prosecutor's demand for five years in prison as "an unprecedented level of repression against the right to protest." Nowhere in the EU have such high penalties been demanded for climate protests. “The punishment of peaceful protests and socially critical engagement not only affects the accused, but also has a chilling effect on society as a whole and endangers internationally recognized fundamental freedoms,” she says. The human rights organization Amnesty International has announced that it will follow the proceedings as an observer.

Greenpeace is repeatedly the target of judicial investigations in Spain. Since 2020, around 30 activists have been in court for peaceful protests and passive resistance. In addition, there are countless fine notices.

But other countries are also seeing increasingly tough action against environmental organizations. For example in the USA, where Greenpeace was recently ordered to pay several hundred million US dollars in compensation to an oil company.