Category: Gender

The Ice­landic State has hound­ed and harassed Sav­ing Ice­land activists since the net­work was formed in 2004. In the lat­est episode of this sor­did saga; Miri­am Rose, an activist from the UK who lives in Ice­land is threat­ened with depor­ta­tion for being: “a threat to ‘pub­lic order and secu­ri­ty’ and ‘fun­da­men­tal soci­etal val­ues’. She has only ever been con­vict­ed of ‘Dis­obey­ing Police Orders’ con­trary to the dra­con­ian ‘Police Acts’ for which she has served a short prison sen­tence; in soli­tary con­fine­ment in a men’s prison.

On Fri­day 21st Sep­tem­ber, Sav­ing Ice­land activist Miri­am Rose was pre­sent­ed with a let­ter from the Ice­landic Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion threat­en­ing her with pos­si­ble expul­sion from Ice­land. The let­ter claims that due to her par­tic­i­pa­tion in two actions at smelter sites she may be con­sid­ered a threat to ‘pub­lic order and secu­ri­ty’ and ‘fun­da­men­tal soci­etal val­ues’. The let­ter also claims that Sav­ing Ice­land pays activists for being arrest­ed, a claim repeat­ed­ly denied and proven to be false.

Sav­ing Ice­land is an inter­na­tion­al grass roots net­work that uses direct action to con­front the Ice­landic gov­ern­men­t’s Heavy Indus­try Pol­i­cy. The gov­ern­ment are intent on build­ing alu­mini­um smelters to exploit the coun­try’s geot­her­mal and hydro-elec­tric poten­tial, an eco­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe sold as ‘green ener­gy’. Sav­ing Ice­land also pro­motes and prac­tices sol­i­dar­i­ty with strug­gles against the alu­mini­um indus­try world­wide, such as in Trinidad, South Africa and India.

Miri­am has already served 8 days in prison for protest­ing against the destruc­tion of Ice­landic wilder­ness, for which the UK Green Par­ty Prin­ci­pal Speak­er Dr Derek Wall accused the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment of polit­i­cal harass­ment and demand­ed her imme­di­ate release. In Radio 1 Ice­landic news pro­gram Spegillinn yes­ter­day, the police admit­ted that this was to be the first of many attempt­ed depor­ta­tions of activists.

Miri­am is now wait­ing for a deci­sion by the Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion, hav­ing sub­mit­ted her objec­tion to depor­ta­tion. ‘I am very shocked that the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment con­tin­ue to pun­ish me, after already pay­ing so heav­i­ly for my actions and ideals. This seems to be an attempt to scare peo­ple from protest­ing here, and I find such treat­ment sur­pris­ing in a sup­pos­ed­ly devel­oped democ­ra­cy like Ice­land. I am a peace­ful and edu­cat­ed per­son and have nev­er posed a threat to the police or any oth­er per­son dur­ing my time here. I was intend­ing to set­tle in Ice­land, and have been mak­ing moves to learn Ice­landic and con­tribute to this soci­ety.’

In 2005 the Ice­landic Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion attempt­ed to deport 21 Sav­ing Ice­land activists. Activists were snatched off the streets of Reyk­javik by plain clothes police, held overnight with no food, water or even pre­tense of a legal process. An elder­ly aca­d­e­m­ic with no con­nec­tion to Sav­ing Ice­land was hos­pi­talised with seri­ous head injuries after he wit­nessed activists being bun­dled into an unmarked car. Plain clothes police also broke into build­ings in an attempt to get to activists on the ‘black­list’. The Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion, denied that there was such a list in an inter­view with tabloid paper DV, for­tu­nate­ly Sav­ing Ice­land was able to sup­ply them with a copy com­plete with the Direc­torate’s seal and Hildur Dun­gal’s (the Direc­tor’s) sig­na­ture. Even­tu­al­ly the Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion admit­ted it had no legal right to deport any­one on the list.

In 2006 14 activists were tried and con­vict­ed for ‘Dis­obey­ing Police Orders’ and received prison sen­tences of up to 18 days a small group was also con­vict­ed of ‘Repres­sion of Lib­er­ty’ and sen­tenced to 2 months sus­pend­ed for 3 years on the false wit­ness of a man­ag­er at engi­neer­ing firm Hon­nen where they had attempt­ed to occu­py offices, the same man­ag­er punched and kicked pro­test­ers and slammed a door on some­one’s head.

Ear­li­er this year after Reyk­javik’s first Reclaim the Streets the Ice­landic police began to con­fis­cate pass­port of for­eign activists, some­thing they have no legal author­i­ty to do. The Ice­landic State have also had a long his­to­ry of harass­ing Ice­landic activists, in one case they have alleged­ly made false reports to Inter­pol accus­ing a Sav­ing Ice­land activist of trav­el­ing on a forged pass­port and attempt­ed to strip the activists Ice­landic Cit­i­zen­ship.

If the Ice­landic Police and Immi­gra­tion Direc­torate can get away with deport­ing Miri­am, then they will use depor­ta­tions more fre­quent­ly to silence dis­sent and under­mine sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ice­landic envi­ron­men­tal­ists. They must be stopped!

The web­site of the Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion is http://www.utl.is/english

The direc­tor’s name is Hildur Dun­gal: hildur@utl.is

See also:
Report on Miri­am’s depor­ta­tion and state­ment from Sav­ing Ice­land:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/983

Report on Miri­am’s Incar­cer­a­tion in Soli­tary Con­fine­ment in a Men’s Prison:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/892

State­ment of Sup­port from UK Green Par­ty:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/985 and @ http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/3171

Report on Sav­ing Ice­land’s fund­ing:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/846

Report of Pre­vi­ous attempts to Deport Sav­ing Ice­land activists:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/144

Report on how the Ice­landic Immi­gra­tion Direc­torate can behave quite dif­fer­ent­ly if you are pals with a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/759