Teenager arrested after tying herself to Japananese Embassy

25.1.2008
A British teenag­er has been arrest­ed after tying her­self to a stair­case at the Japan­ese Embassy in Lon­don in a protest over whal­ing, she said. Sophie said last night: “I hon­est­ly think that me hav­ing a crim­i­nal record is not a big price to pay when what the whales are going through is so much worse.”

25.1.2008
A British teenag­er has been arrest­ed after tying her­self to a stair­case at the Japan­ese Embassy in Lon­don in a protest over whal­ing, she said. Sophie said last night: “I hon­est­ly think that me hav­ing a crim­i­nal record is not a big price to pay when what the whales are going through is so much worse.”

A British teenag­er has been arrest­ed after tying her­self to a stair­case at the Japan­ese Embassy in Lon­don in a protest over whal­ing, she said.

Sophie Wyness, 14, and her father Mar­tin attached them­selves to a stone stair­case inside the embassy lob­by with cable ties overnight, say­ing it was wrong to “bru­tal­ly mur­der” whales.

Sophie said last night: “I hon­est­ly think that me hav­ing a crim­i­nal record is not a big price to pay when what the whales are going through is so much worse.”

It is not the first time the 14-year-old, who has also cam­paigned against Aus­trali­a’s nuclear pol­i­cy, has been removed from a protest but it is the first time she has been arrest­ed.

She said: “I have just been released. We have been charged with crim­i­nal tres­pass and it will go before the Attor­ney Gen­er­al, not the CPS, because of the polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions.”

The teenag­er was inspired to take action after watch­ing a film about the Green­peace ves­sel Esper­an­za — which is cur­rent­ly dis­rupt­ing the activ­i­ties of the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet in the South­ern Ocean.

One video clip last­ing 30 sec­onds, which showed a whale being blown up, had “hit me hard”, she explained ear­li­er.

The video pushed her to stage the hour-long protest because she felt it was wrong to wrong to “bru­tal­ly mur­der” whales.

“It’s a very impor­tant sub­ject at the moment. They’re such amaz­ing crea­tures and they deserve rights and love and a bit of respect,” she said.

“I have total respect for the Japan­ese peo­ple but not what they’re doing out there with the whales.”

She said tak­ing direct action was the only way to get atten­tion on the issue.

“Hope­ful­ly it’ll get put out there and show we’re not going to sit back and let them get away with it.”

Mr Wyness said he was only involved in the protest in order to sup­port his daugh­ter and spoke of his pride that she had been so res­olute in stand­ing up for her con­vic­tions.

He said: “I was real­ly only there as back up. This was Sophie’s day.”

He added: “I am extreme­ly proud of Sophie. She is an amaz­ing, amaz­ing young woman full or courage and deter­mi­na­tion and her con­vic­tions are very strong. This doc­u­men­tary gen­uine­ly moved her to the point where she want­ed to do some­thing about it.

Quotes tak­en from thelondonpaper.com