Thank you for the opportunity to raise this matter in the House. I appreciate that the Minister for Foreign Affairs is absent on important business and I thank the Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach for coming to hear the few points I wish to raise in the context of this matter. I should also like to advise the House — and you, a Cheann Comhairle — that since I requested an opportunity to deal with this matter the m.v. Solo has been released from detention by the Russians at Murmansk and is now safely on its way to a port in Norway.
I should like to place on record my appreciation, as a constituency representative for the Irish citizen, Susan Foreman, who was on that boat, to the consular section of the Department of Foreign Affairs for the work they undertook in maintaining contact through diplomatic representatives at Murmansk with the ship and the people on board. I have no doubt that Greenpeace and Miss Foreman's family appreciate the work that was done. I am sure the same applies to Miss Foreman.
However, a number of matters remain outstanding and I ask the Minister of State to consult the Minister for Foreign Affairs on his return with a view to doing a number of very basic things. The ship was seized in international waters, it was not within the territorial waters of Russia when it was boarded by armed members of the naval service of Russia and detained. It was in an area they consider — and describe — as the economic area zone but that is a zone and area not recognised for the purposes of international law and they had no business seizing and boarding the craft in the circumstances. In addition, three shots were fired from a 30 millimetre gun at the stern of the boat as a warning, a threat or indeed an insult. They were then taken forcibly in tow and dragged through the waters to a naval base north of Murmansk where they were held incommunicado for almost one week. Only diplomatic representatives were allowed to enter the ship, a lawyer and representative of Greenpeace, who were in Murmansk, were not allowed to meet or consult the crew.
The radio control room of the ship was also sealed so that no contact could be made by the crew members with their own organisation, friends or relatives. Consequently, the rights of an Irish citizen were very seriously violated by the Russian naval authorities and I ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs to lodge the strongest possible protest with the Russian authorities in relation to this matter. In addition, it is important that Ireland should strongly state its support, through this action of protest, for Greenpeace, which is a friend of Ireland in a very meaningful way, Indeed, one of the other members and crew on board the ship was a Mr. John Large, an Englishman who works as an adviser — not only to Greenpeace — but to Dublin County Council, Dublin Corporation and Dún Laoghaire Corporation, in regard to our interest in pursuing matters in England relating to Sellafield and other nuclear programmes there. He was also detained in the way I have already described.
Greenpeace are a non-violent, active organisation working in our interest and in those of people around the world for a safe environment. They are acknowledged to be non-violent and are not armed. There was no need for the aggressive, hijacking attitude of the Russian authorities on this occasion. They were simply trying to investigate an area which is considered to be the single largest world-wide illegal dump of nuclear submarine reactors in the world. It has been in operation for over 30 years and has been used by the Russians contrary to all international agreements, including the provisions of the London Dumping Conference of which Ireland and Russia are members. Over the period of 30 years it has received over 15 reactors from dumped submarines and has had over 100 nuclear tests carried out there. For those reasons, it was responsible and reasonable for Greenpeace to be in the area to carry out their own independent tests of the contamination and abuse of the environment generally.
One of the crew members was an elected member of the Russian parliament and no one could complain in relation to what they were doing. They certainly did not deserve the treatment they got and I hope that Ireland will record its strong reservations — if not protests — about what has happened.
