Activist closes Eiffel tower over Greenpeace arrests
A GREENPEACE activist has staged a protest in a tent suspended from the second floor of the Eiffel Tower against Russia's detention of 30 members of the environmental lobby group.
The activist unveiled a banner on Saturday (Oct 26) with the slogans "Free the Arctic 30" and "Militants in prison, climate in danger", forcing authorities to close the French monument to tourists in the morning.
Moscow has sparked an international outcry over its heavy-handed response after two Greenpeace activists in September scaled a state-owned oil platform to protest against Russian energy exploration in the Arctic.
It detained 30 crew members of the Dutch-flagged icebreaker Arctic Sunrise, including two journalists, in the northern Murmansk region, on piracy charges, which prosecutors later reduced to hooliganism.
