What Russia’s Piracy Charges Against Greenpeace Mean for International Law

By Eugene Kontorovich on October 2, 2013 1:04 pm in Energy, Environment, International Law, Russia

Amazingly, Russia has brought criminal piracy charges against the crew of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, which it had arrested on the high seas. The piracy charges make a mockery of international law, for reasons I’ve discussed. Moreover, such clearly abusive and politicized piracy charges are quite unprecedented in modern history, as far as I can recall. Indeed, I am quite surprised by the charges; I had thought Russia would consider the arrest and initial detention sufficient harassment. (But I was more on the mark with my comparison to Pussy Riot – apparently supporters of the Dutch-flagged vessel are now calling it the Pussy Sunrise.)
The charges are significant for international law because historically nations have been extremely wary of pre-textual or politicized piracy charges. To be sure, nations often publicly accused their enemies of piracy – the U.S. in the Quasi-War constantly denounced aggressive French privateering as “piracy.” In the Civil War, President Lincoln also called the obviously-unrecognized Confederate privateers as pirates. But in these cases the matter would almost never proceed from propaganda to prosecution.
One of the more recent politicized invocations of piracy was the Santa Maria incident of 1961, when anti-Salazar forces hijacked a Portuguese cruise ship. Lisbon denounced the attackers as pirates and demanded their arrest. But because the attackers had come on board as passengers, it did not satisfy the “two ship” requirement, just like in the present case, and the international community did not support the piracy characterization. (The terrorists ultimately got asylum in Brazil.) The point is that looks a lot more like piracy than this, and even still did not meet the requirements.
An internationalist explanation would suggest that this is because nations understood that piracy charges are heavy medicine. It is one of the very few justifications for arresting vessels on the high seas, and thus its promiscuous invocation could threaten the freedom of navigation, on which the commerce of the world stands.
A realist – and more real – explanation is the fear of retaliation. If the U.S. hung French privateers as “pirates,” Paris would respond in kind. And Moscow is not losing any sleep over the possibility of retaliation in kind that the Netherlands (once a great sea power), or any of the numerous home countries of the crew, including the U.S.
Russia is feeling its revived-superpower oats. MEMO to the U.S. Senate: It is good that Moscow ratified the UNCLOS treaty. Now its violation of customary international law is combined with a violation of treaty law! Two for the price of one.

Skull Reaper Getting Hassled by Rest of City Council

Skull Reaper Getting Hassled by Rest of City Council

Normally stories about city-council dress codes (or at least the ones I notice) involve audience members refusing to wear pants, but this one is about a councilor who won't take off his mask.

Skull Reaper A-ji won a seat on the city council of Oita, Japan, in February, but was not allowed to attend initial meetings last week after refusing to remove his lucha-libre-style wrestling mask for that purpose. According to one report, the majority decided that allowing a masked city councilor would "offend the decency of the Assembly," which sounds like something they just made up because they're not wrestling fans. Another report said the majority cited a rule providing that "a person taking the floor shall not wear items such as a hat." If that rule exists and applies to everybody, that might be different—I'm having trouble thinking of a reason that a wrestling mask would not be an "item such as a hat."
But should they make an exception for Skull Reaper A-Ji? He did campaign in the mask, after all, so if it didn't bother the citizens why should it bother the councilors? In fact, if the citizens voted for masked representation, wouldn't making an exception be the democratic thing to do? Because Japan is awesome, there is actually precedent for such a thing:

A number of politicians who choose to wear wrestling masks have been elected at the local level in Japan, including a councillor who goes by the name Super Delfin in Osaka and the former professional wrestler The Great Sasuke, who was elected to represent Iwate Prefecture in 2003.

"Skull Reaper" is, if anything, more awesome than those guys. But unless the majority has changed its view during the last week or so, he remains shut out of council meetings.
Unless he has changed his own view, that is, and agreed to unmask. As of last week, he was standing firm. "If I take my mask off, I'm an entirely different person," he said, although in fact he would be the same person, just not wearing a mask. Still, "I will not take it off," he insisted. At last report, the stalemate had not been resolved.
These reports don't make it clear whether Skull Reaper A-ji is or has ever been a real wrestler, or if he just likes the masks. There is no suggestion that he is somehow dangerous or prone to violence, and in some legislative bodies that sort of thing might actually come in handy anyway.
Give the people what they want. Or what 2,828 of them wanted, at least.

March 18, 2013 in International Law, Lawmakers/Politicians, Sports, The Inexplicable | Permalink

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