Lucy Lawless Arrested in Greenpeace Protest
Actress Lucy Lawless was arrested Monday along with six other Greenpeace activists after spending four days atop an oil drilling ship in New Zealand.
Lawless and the other protesters climbed the 174-foot drilling tower of the Noble Discoverer in Port Taranaki, New Zealand. The Shell-chartered ship was scheduled to leave this weekend to drill five new exploratory wells in the Arctic.
The 43-year old actress, best known for her titular role on the TV series "Xena: Warrior Princess" and for her recent role on the Starz series "Spartacus," sent out a series of tweets from the tower during the protest.
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"I've got three kids. My sole biological reason for being on this planet is to ensure that they can flourish, and they can't do that in a filthy, degraded environment," she said. "We need to stand up while we still can."
Lawless also said that the protesters removed themselves from the tower because wind gusts were becoming too violent for them to stay.
"I found last night pretty darn scary," she wrote. "Not for sissies."
Lawless and the six protesters who came down Monday were charged with burglary. One other protester left the tower earlier in the weekend and was charged with unlawfully being on a ship.
All of the activists have been released and are due to appear in court on Thursday.
Shell New Zealand Chairman Rob Jager said in a release that Greenpeace had not accepted the company's offer to engage in a "productive conversation" about the protests. He added that the protests had endangered lives and he was glad it was over.
Greenpeace New Zealand's chief executive Bunny McDiarmid said the protest had gone "brilliantly" and that over 100,000 people contacted Shell to oppose the drilling.
