Journalists charged with trespassing after filming Frontline Action on Coal activists include Hugo Clément.
Four journalists working for the public television network France 2 have been charged with trespassing for filming a protest near the Abbot Point coal terminal, in north Queensland, targeting the operations of the Adani group.
The group of journalists includes Hugo Clément, a reporter well known in France for his documentaries about climate change and environmental issues.
Clément and a crew were arrested while filming anti-coal activists from the group Frontline Action on Coal, which early on Monday morning set up a blockade outside the Abbot Point port. About 20 members of the environmental group gathered outside the port entrance from 7am. Two locked themselves to a concrete barrel on the roadway.
In a statement Frontline Action on Coal said Clément and others were told by police they were 'obstructing the railway' while filming the protests.
'Without warning, all four Frenchmen were immediately placed in handcuffs and put into police vehicles,' the statement said.
The group was taken to a police station in the nearby town of Bowen. They were released on bail on Monday afternoon and ordered to face the local magistrates court in September.
Clément said he spent several hours in a cell after being arrested while filming a protest, which included two demonstrators locking their hands inside a concrete barrel.
'We were just filming the action at the blockade of the highway and police came straight to us and arrested us without a word, without saying anything,',Clément said. 
'They took us into a cell for seven hours.'
He said he and his crew, who work for French public broadcaster France 2, were charged with trespassing and released on conditional bail, which included that they not go within 20km of the Carmichael site.
'We didn’t understand why they arrested us because we weren’t doing anything wrong, we were just doing our jobs by filming the action,' he said.
'I had a good picture of Australia ... this is not a very democratic thing to say to a film crew, to say you cannot go there.'
In a statement, Queensland police confirmed they arrested seven people, including three French nationals who were charged with one count of 'trespassing on a railway'.
