Press release - 12 October, 2007
12 October 2007 – Six Indian Greenpeace volunteers are spending the weekend in jail after being refused bail after a protest at a coal-fired power plant outside of Kolkata.The ruling came on the same day that Al Gore and the IPCC jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize for increasing international knowledge of, and action on climate change.
The six volunteers were arrested on Thursday, 11 October, after
scaling the chimney of the Kolaghat power plant and painting the
slogan "Smoking Kills". They have been charged with criminal
trespass and violation of the West Bengal Maintenance of Public
Order Act of 1972. The West Bengal district court today denied bail
requests from the activists' who have been remanded in a
correctional jail. The climbers return to court on Monday.
"The 'Climate 6' must be released immediately," said Vinuta
Gopal, climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace India. "It is
climate change that needs to be arrested, not those who are trying
to stop it."
"Al Gore, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has urged the world
to take action against coal, the world's number one climate
killer," said Gopal. "This is precisely what our volunteers were
doing."
After his film, An Inconvenient Truth, raised international
awareness of climate change, Al Gore was quoted, in August 2007:
"I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking
bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power
plants."
Greenpeace's flagship, the Rainbow Warrior arrived in Calcutta
today bearing the message "Arrest Climate Change: Free the Climate
6."
The Rainbow Warrior is conducting a climate change awareness
tour around India in the run-up to crucial UN climate negotiations
in Bali, this December. At the Bali conference, governments from
around the world will meet to discuss extending the Kyoto
Protocol's legally-binding limits on greenhouse pollution.
ENDS
Other contacts: Photos of the protest at Kolaghat power plant, on 11 October, are available via the Greenpeace picture desk. Tel: +31 6 5381 9121 Jo Kuper, Greenpeace International communications. Tel: +31 6 4616 2039 (mobile)Vinuta Gopal (in India), Greenpeace India. Tel: +91 98 4 553 5418 (mobile)
Exp. contact date: 2007-11-12 00:00:00