The Criminalisation of Environmental Activism in Europe

When the chief of Romanian Intelligence (SRI) declared last autumn that ‘eco-anarchist elements’ infiltrated the Roșia Montana protests, very few people took this statement seriously. The general attitude has been to dismiss the statement as being paranoid at best, and ludicrous at worst. However, when a few months later, the protest area in Pungești became ‘special area of public security’, flooded with police, and thoroughly controlled, it became clear that the Romanian state was not joking. Environmental activism is strictly controlled, and anytime the government perceives some excess, it steps in to curtail the process. For the general public, this heavy-handed treatment of people exercising their democratic rights is legitimised by security concerns.

In this text, I will briefly analyse the ways in which environmental activism is being criminalised and treated as terrorism. I will illustrate the text with instances of such treatment from Romania, Italy, France, Greece, the UK and the US. Such a long list of examples is needed in order to argue that the criminalisation of environmental activism is far from being an isolated aspect of one government’s policy. It is part of a global trend whereby the contemporary capitalist state is repressing any significant interference in its strategic alliance with multinational companies. It is also part of a global trend in which governments articulate certain forms of civil disobedience as security threats for the infrastructure of the state. In this process, the terrorist label functions as the most important alarm that justifies a host of heavy repressive measures against environmental activists. As I will show, the label of eco-terrorism plays a crucial role in cracking down on any form of radical dissent towards the activity of big companies.

On a more theoretical level, I will argue here that the instances of repression against environmental activism illustrate the intimate link between state security and private property. Indeed, the activities of radical activists engaged in environmental work are seen as a terrorist threat not because any lives are being jeopardised, but because they attend to the integrity of private property. This is a crucial argument, because it goes against the mainstream explanation, which sees security as being connected to identity.

On an activist level, this text serves as a sort of warning. Environmental activism seems to be no joke for the state. The repressive apparatus that governments have been building in the past three decades to counter environmental activism is dense, insidious, cunning and oftentimes impenetrable. The state is infiltrating, intimidating, tear-gassing, beating, threatening and often even murdering those that stand in its way. This text is written by somebody who does not have any involvement in any form of environmental activism, to an audience in those groups that have already had such experiences. It does not pretend to speak on behalf of any of these groups, nor to lecture anybody on what environmental activism is or how it should be done. It merely wants to uncover some of the repressive tools of the state, which activists should probably be aware of.

‘Eco-terrorism’ and the ‘Green Scare’ in the United States

I start with the United States, because the term ‘eco-terrorism’ originates and has been diffused from there. In 1983, anti-environment activist Ron Arnold invented the term in order to aid his campaign against environmental regulations for companies.[1] From the outset it has been associated with another concept, the term ‘ecotage’, which refers to acts of sabotage against property, with a strict requirement that all precautions are taken so that no life is harmed. Unlike ‘ecoterrorism’, ecotage is a term coined by activists themselves, especially by people from Earth First! and the sister groups, ALF (‘Animal Liberation Front’) and ELF (‘Earth Liberation Front’), in the US.

The efforts to associate ecotage with terrorism have been quite effective in demonising the image of environmental activists. ‘Ecoterrorism’ is a term that generates at the same time fear and rage from the general public. On the one hand, it creates the image of people that would stop at nothing in pursuing their agenda, and this may include damaging attacks of vandalism on critical facilities and infrastructure; on the other hand, it conjures the image of the deviant anarchist, who is outside and against society, ready at any point to unleash chaos and destruction, but with no respect for the work of others. Such was the so-called ‘Green Scare’ in the US in the mid-2000s. Environmental activism was attacked from two sides – from the side of the media, which was generating and reinforcing some of the stereotypes mentioned earlier, and from the side of the government, which unleashed a considerable and disproportionate crackdown on the ‘radical green’ movement.[2] Both these elements have been shown to be orchestrated by large companies with a direct interest in minimising the threat of activism against their practices and facilities.[3] As I will show in the following cases, the criminalisation of environmental activism follows this three-fold pattern of media campaigns, heavy state repression and corporate interests.

In the US, this process has been augmented after 9/11. The Patriot Act of 2001 stated that attacks against property by animal rights activists is a terrorist activity. In 2005, the US government launched ‘Operation Backfire’, owing to which eleven activists saw their sentences increased by a measure known as ‘terrorist enhancement’. ‘This legal provision can add up to twenty years to prison sentences, and in some cases, quadruple prison time.’[4] It allows harsh restrictions and places the defendants in maximum security prisons. As journalist Will Potter insists, the US government chose this legal path due to the political nature of the crimes under trial, not because of human losses – of which there were none.[5]

In 2006, the US government passed the ‘Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act’, which criminalizes any damage or loss of property associated with the animal enterprise. This act was rushed through the Congress without much debate, at the request of several corporations, like Pfizer and United Egg Producers.[6] American corporations are also organised in lobby groups such as ALEC, which consists of organisations typically targeted by environmental activists, and which push for protectionist legislation that includes criminalising dissent.[7] The Green Scare was meant to protect corporate profits from any acts of ecosabotage, but also generally from media campaigns that would jeopardise their image – as was the case with the SHAC campaign, which will be explained in the UK section of this text.

Romania

I will now move to the Romanian context, to show how the ‘eco-terrorist’ label was used there. In September 2013, the Romanian chief of Intelligence, George Maior, created quite a fuss when, in the context of the Roșia Montana protests, he talked about ‘attempts on the part of extremist eco-anarchist structures to exploit or hijack otherwise legitimate protest movements.’[8] When pressed for an explanation over what exactly ‘eco-anarchist structures’ meant, his institution replied that it is a term used in connection with violent acts that have environmentalist motivation. These violent acts are able, in the view of the Intelligence Services, to endanger the safety of citizens and the security of the state.[9] Also, according to Maior, such acts are undertaken by groups that may ‘exploit’ or ‘hijack’ otherwise legitimate protests. Finally, his institution declared that it has been working actively to prevent such acts from happening.

We all know that the Roșia Montana protests were generally peaceful, and despite some incidents of police brutality, there were no serious problems with the authorities. However, the Romanian state does not have an overall good record with such incidents. In 2008, the NATO summit, also dubbed a matter of national security like Roșia Montana, was heavily policed and the counter-protests ended in a shameful episode of brutality. The Gendarmerie intervened violently after receiving intelligence that there were ‘anti-social’ activities being prepared for the protests, intelligence that was never publicly confirmed by the SRI.[10] Yet the latter institution did orchestrate infiltrations, phone tapping and internet surveillance as a means of repressing ‘the anarchists’ that were preparing the counter-demonstrations in Bucharest.[11]

Therefore, it should have not come as a big surprise that only a few months after Maior’s declarations, the protests against Chevron in Pungești were brutally repressed – without any public evidence of ‘eco-anarchist’ infiltrations. Pungești became a ‘special public security area’, where the gendarmerie came in big numbers to prevent a handful of locals from destroying the property of the giant oil company.[12] Several basic rights were disregarded, without any visible responsibility from the Romanian authorities.[13] Moreover, the Prime Minister declared that the intervention is justified because the company’s private property must be respected.[14] We thus already get an inkling of the intimate connection between state and capital when it comes to criminalising environmental activism. This is a connection that will be developed further in the next examples. What is useful to take from the Romanian case is the eagerness with which the state used repression to prevent environmentalist activism in the name of national security. By using the trope of ‘eco-anarchism’ as part of a fear campaign, the state moved the discussion from the political level to one in which any repressive measure can be justified publicly as ‘national defence’ against extremists.[15]

European Union and ecological terrorism

The actions and discourses of the Romanian state are of course embedded in a larger context. At the European level, environmental activism has increasingly been articulated as a security threat and criminalised. In 2011, one of the institutions that coordinate anti-terrorism activities at the EU level, Europol, published the EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report (TESAT). It contained a section devoted entirely to ‘single issue terrorism’[16], which focused exclusively on ‘extremist environmental activities’ and ‘animal rights extremism’. The report found that such activities increased during 2010 in the EU, and raised the alarm for governments to stay alert.

It is interesting to quote from the report, in order to show how this warning about environmental activism is being articulated at the European level:

‘Environmental extremism is increasing and gaining support from other extremist groups. Some anarchist groups appear to be attracted to environmental and ecological causes. […].There is a dynamic interaction between groups and individuals in different countries, with language or nationality forming no barrier to cooperation. Extremist groups and individuals from different countries and groups participated in protests and attacks all over Europe, uniting their forces in common initiatives. […] Single-issue extremist groups are becoming increasingly network-based.’[17]

Such an alarm is based on a number of ‘violent incidents’, of which the report exemplifies actions such as ‘blackmail, sending threatening emails or making warning phone calls to their targets, often threatening their family and committing physical assault against their property’, or the ‘mass release of animals’, and even ‘disinformation methods in order to discredit their targets and weaken their public acceptance. Images of sick and abused animals are embedded in video footage and made public.’[18] All of these actions are carried out against companies and their property. It is, therefore, very difficult to understand the heightened concern that the EU has towards such activities, which, as Statewatch comments, ‘often reflect the alarmist internal discourse of governments’.[19]

But the issue at stake here is not necessarily the alarmist discourse, but indeed the categorisation of such acts under the label of ‘terrorism’. The subsequent TESAT annual reports have all kept this category. Several environmental movements in Italy, UK and France (detailed later in this text) were highlighted as being especially problematic. In 2011, The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research published a ‘World directory of extremist, terrorist and other organisations’, with lists of ‘terrorist’ groups in each country. It is interesting to look at some of the European countries: Austria has one entry (‘Militant Forces against Huntingdon Life Sciences’), the Netherlands has also one entry (‘Animal Liberation Front’), but the UK has no less than six environmental activist groups in the list.

Throughout Europe, repression against environmental activists has increased, and more and more cases are being treated under the label of ‘terrorism’. In Spain in 2011, the state arrested 12 activists, members of different animal rights groups, for liberating 20,000 minks from a fur farm. The Judge in charge of the case declared to the press that the activists have caused important damages to the fur farm industry, and therefore will be accused of ecoterrorism.[20] In Finland, in 2011, four people were arrested for posting videos taken by an animal liberation group inside pig farms in 2009. The farms demanded compensations that amounted to 175.000 euros.[21] In Austria, after systematic investigations from the authorities, which included email interceptions, phone tapping, and infiltration, ten people were arrested in 2008 for being connected to animal rights groups. All of them were suspected of belonging to criminal organisations, and some of their activities that would normally be legitimate civil society acts such as organising conferences and workshops, were seen as signs of terrorist activity.[22]

United Kingdom

The repressive apparatus of the former empire is still one of the best functioning police and intelligence systems in the world. For more than two decades, this apparatus has been aimed discriminately at environmental activists. It has used techniques that at least for this observer seem cut out straight out of Orwell’s dystopia. I will give three examples of this: Operation Washington, Mark Kennedy and the ‘SHAC’ case. First, in 1995, the UK government launched operation ‘Washington’, which intended to curtail ‘eco-anarchism’. Tens of bookshops, homes and printing houses were raided by anti-terror squads. The press officer of ELF, Robin Webb was arrested for delivering press releases, after an operation was conducted to frame him, which included planting a shotgun in his car.[23] Soon after (‘Operation Washington phase 2’), three editors of Green Anarchist (GA) were convicted of ‘conspiracy to incite criminal damage’.[24] The evidence used was environmentalist journals and zines, including GA[25], which published ‘direct action diaries’ of animal liberation actions. As one of the editors put it, ‘Basically, we six were being held responsible, not just for what we ourselves had written, nor collectively for each others’ writings, but for any and every other radical piece of protest literature collected during the 55 police raids, and produced or sold between 1990 and 1996.’[26] The case uncovered the work of an agent provocateur – Tim Hepple – who had infiltrated the GA.[27] It also coincided with a fear-mongering media campaign that labelled environmental activists as ‘eco-terrorists’.[28] As the GA wrote in 1997, ‘MI5 defector David Shayler said […] that “ecowarriors” were the Security Service’s prime target now after the Northern Ireland ceasefire. Using the Gandalf[29] trial to showcase militant Greens as “ecoterrorists” would certainly serve their ends well’.[30]

The ‘Gandalf’ case highlighted the desperation of the state to consider activism against corporations a form of  ‘conspiracy’, and to transform anything random into ‘incriminating evidence’.  A few years later, the criminalisation of environmental activism by the intelligence units of the state surfaced again, with the case of Mark Kennedy. In 2011, The Guardian uncovered the work of several officers who had infiltrated environmental groups. Mark Kennedy had been involved with activists for seven years, before being uncovered by his partner (with whom he also had an affair).[31] He embedded himself in the activist scene and participated in several direct actions, where he had an organising role. Thus, he was able to supply the police with all the data concerning the tactics and intentions of the activists. He tipped the police on the hijacking of a coal train, on occupying a power plant and even on actions happening in the famous Copenhagen squat Ungdomhuset.[32]

One of the crucial things that emerged during the Mark Kennedy scandal was that his work was requested by companies such as E.ON and EDF.[33] The police acted in close tandem with these companies, exchanging information about the actions of environmental activists.[34] E.ON and other companies also hired private security firms to spy on activists and protest organisers.[35] More recently, the cooperation between energy companies and the UK government surfaced when EDF sued a group of No Dash for Gas activists for occupying and shutting down a coal power plant in 2013. The police intervened in the case on behalf of the company, although it was a civil matter and it had no competence to do so.[36]

The third case of criminalising environmental activism in the UK is related to the Huntingdon Life Sciences animal testing laboratory. Since 1999, activists in the UK, US and the Netherlands have been campaigning to close down this lab, by sending letters to other companies working with HLS and informing them about the horrors that the animals were being exposed to. In 2007, the UK government arrested 32 people for conspiring to blackmail HLS.[37] In 2012, four more people were arrested. They were accused of ‘SOCPA 145 (interfering with a contractual relationship so as to harm an animal research organisation) and SOCPA 146 (intimidation of persons connected with an animal research organisation),’[38] which are laws that were introduced in 2005 and that transform minor offences against vivisection into serious crimes with severe punishments. Thus, the accused received up to 6 years in prison for taking part in the campaign against HLS.[39]

Greece[40]

The story of the mining project in Skouries has a lot in common with the Roșia Montana case: a corporation steps into a zone of pristine natural beauty in a time of material deprivation for its residents, promising jobs and dividing public opinion. The government presents the investment as a golden opportunity. The ancient forest of Skouries has been the main site of contestation between Hellas Gold and Greek police on the one hand, and the area’s inhabitants on the other hand. In the past, there have been other plans for the exploitation of the area, but they were halted due to the inhabitants’ vigorous opposition. Notably, the mining facilities have been fenced and equipped with cameras and alarms, while security guards have been reportedly asking for citizens’ ID cards to allow them to pass.^[41]

In October 2012 the police responded to the over 2500 protesters by beating and attacking them with teargas. Fourteen arrests were made^[42]; one of the protesters prosecuted was a fifteen year old boy.^[43] A few months later, in February 2013, forty hooded people set the mining facilities on fire after having immobilized the security guards. The police detained 27 people, but no evidence was found against them.^[44] The arson attack gave the police a much needed pretext to terrorize the locals, randomly detaining people and even forcing them to give DNA samples, even though no charges could be pressed against them.^[45] The culmination of this intimidation campaign came a few days later, when 6 squads of riot police stormed the nearby village of Ierissos. The police detained seven people as suspects for the attack at the mining facilities^[46] and, as residents reported, they conducted house searches.^[47] According to the residents, the police used teargas excessively (an accusation that the police representatives deny), while the media failed to give an impartial account of the events in Skouries, giving the weight of reporting to the views of the state authorities and the company.^[48] Clashes between residents and police were frequent, with citizens (women, school kids, disabled people) often being prosecuted for participating in protests and blockades,^[49] held by the police without being able to contact their lawyers, and coerced to give DNA samples.^[50] But intimidation and oppression is not limited to the persecution of protesters. The phones of residents are being tapped and the State Security closely watches their houses.^[51]

In Skouries a citizens’ movement for environmental justice is being labelled as a “criminal organization.” In October 2013, the police accused Tolis Papageorgiou, the founder of the anti-mining movement and one of its most vocal activists, of spreading propaganda aimed to influence public opinion through his interviews in Greek and international media.^[52] The State Security had used the interviews as part of the case file, in order to prove that criminal activities were taking place in Skouries.^[53] Throughout 2014, the police continued their violent repression when confronted with peaceful protesters. In February 19^th, a group of women formed a human chain to prevent workers’ buses from reaching the mining field. The riot police arrested many of the protestors, while some of them were hospitalized due to injuries and extensive use of teargas.^[54] Recently, locals were accused of forming a terrorist organization and had to give genetic material, presenting themselves to police officers and the prosecutor on an almost everyday basis. As it has been shown in the recent case of one inhabitant’s prosecution, the process of DNA identification is completely arbitrary: his genetic material was identified in a cigarette butt found on the mountain. In addition, according to the Greek law, the accused should be notified about the identification of their DNA in order to allow them to be able to take legal action.^[55] The brutal repression together with the arbitrary process the police followed in obtaining and handling DNA material are clear indications that the rights of the locals involved were violated.

Italy and France

The French and Italian examples of the criminalization of environmental activism will be presented together, since they share many similarities.[56] The No Tav and La Zad movements are running in parallel, and are being repressed using almost the same means: brutal police intervention on the one hand, and labelling activists as terrorists on the other hand. The most straight-cut case of this occurred in 1998 in Italy, when three No Tav activists (Silvano Pellissero, Edoardo ‘Baleno’ Massari and Soledad ‘Sole’ Rosas) were arrested for eco-terrorism.[57] During an absurd trial in which no clear evidence against them, and amidst a media backlash against ‘ecoterrorists’,[58] two of the accused (Baleno and Sole) committed suicide in their cells.[59] Their arrest was accompanied by police raids of two squats in Turin. The Italian Anarchists declared that these were more than suicides, they were cases of state murder.[60]

The struggle against the high-speed train continued to be criminalised by the Italian state. The area where the working ground is located has been cordoned off and militarised. The police are using CS tear gas against the protestors, who have been continuously labelled terrorists.[61] In January 2014, the No Tav activists issued a statement according to which ‘The accusation of “terrorism” has very serious legal consequences. But this time the Prosecutor went even further and used, for the first time in Italy’s history, sections of the Penal Code that define any form of resistance to economic and political powers as “terrorism”.’[62] Crucially, the accusations of terrorism are motivated by the fact that the Tav working ground is a ‘public structure and a site of national interest’.[63] Thus, we see that just like in the Romanian case, the state is delimiting an area as being of strategic national interest, and criminalising any illegal activity inside it as an act of terrorism.

An identical story takes place in France, where the opposition to the Notre-Dame des Landes airport has been going on for decades. In 2012, the police attempted to evict the large occupied area of the La Zad movement, and transformed it into a militarised zone where the normal rules of democracy cease to be valid. The protesters are also accused of terrorism. One local politician declared that ‘the institutional  opposition to the airport of Notre Dame des Landes must cease being the legal front of an armed movement.’[64] The Paris government has labelled the movement as ‘ultragauche’, which covers the accusation of terrorism and associates the activists with the ‘Tarnac Nine’ case.[65] This refers to nine people accused of terrorism and suspected of writing the famous tract ‘The Coming Insurrection’.[66]

Criminalisation as a technique of government

In these last two sections, I will synthesize a few theoretical arguments that stem from the previous presentation of the different cases of criminalisation of environmental dissent. To begin with, I argue that this criminalisation functions as a mechanism of governance that seeks to survey, control, tame and punish the population. As I have shown, the accusation of eco-terrorism has little to do with the acts that one has committed. In many cases, people have been labelled terrorists for merely filming inside animal testing facilities or farms, for publishing news about animal liberation, or for possessing literature on deep ecology. Suspects are being criminalized for what the state imagines that they might cause in the future, rather than for actual deeds. Suspicion can also be caused by association: ‘someone is suspected because they know someone who is suspected.’ As such, legitimate acts of non-violent political dissent become dangerous.[67]

Therefore, suspicion is itself a part of the government technique: presupposition becomes a form of knowledge for the state, and it is grounded on the need to reveal what is thought to be hidden and secret. Terrorist activities are generally thought to be concealed, and therefore the state has to constantly invent new ways of dispelling secrecy through ‘locating connections, links and movements [and also] through the use of algorithms that can detect patterns’ of behaviour.[68] In this way, anything becomes incriminating: conference and protests attendance, reading lists, emails, photos, friends, clothing etc. Moreover, the search for patterns means that certain behaviour can also be criminalised, if it fits the established ‘terrorist modus operandi’ that the state works with. In this way, the government is creating dichotomies between good and bad protesters, between activists and terrorists. Although everyone is being watched and recorded, there is a need to establish a category that gets demonised, in order to justify repression.[69] Furthermore, this boundary-making between good and bad activists implies that the latter are a threat to the general security, while the former are just like the rest of ‘us’. Such distinctions between the ‘good us’ and the ‘dangerous them’ are at the heart of state violence in the name of security.[70]

Security and property

Finally, I would like to emphasize that what is generally valid for the treatment of terorrism needs a slight adjustment in the case of ‘eco-terrorism’. When terrorists become a security problem, they are usually represented, as I have mentioned, as the ‘dangerous them’ who are fundamentally opposed to ‘us’. This is an identity marker that functions perfectly for the state, because it harvests legitimacy beyond the confines of democratic political nuances. Somebody can be labelled as dangerous in virtue of their difference to the majority. However, in the case of ‘eco-terrorists’, the identity dimension gets complemented by an economic one. As I have shown in each case, the criminalisation of environmental activism is strictly connected to corporate demands that private property damage be severely punished. The ideological dimension of this activism gets sidelined in favour of the damage that it can (potentially and allegedly) cause to private firms. Environmental activists are not terrorists because they kill people, but because they kill profit.

In this process, the state plays a crucial role, by aligning its repressive apparatus with corporate demands. The alliance between state and capital is transparent and outrageous: the trope of terrorism is being used to silence and delegitimise people that threaten the ways in which corporations exploit for profit. Sometimes, this alliance is grounded on the idea of ‘development’, such as in grand projects like TAV and Roșia Montana. But oftentimes, the state conspires with capital on a daily basis in order to prevent any form of dissent that would go too far against corporate interests: writing, uncovering, denouncing, imagining alternatives to corporate exploitation – all these acts become criminalised. To put it bluntly, the state makes it a crime to criticise corporations. And not just any crime, but one that brings aggravated consequences and stigmatizes an entire way of thinking about politics. The state acts politically by de-politicizing critical voices. The criminalisation of dissent has the potential to silence and discourage those who would like to imagine and practice alternatives to the existing economic system.

Or maybe it doesn’t.