Anti-whaling hostages — update & solidarity demo reports: Berlin, London, Barcelona, New York, Washington DC

17/1/2008
Sea Shep­herd Shuts Down Antarc­tic Whale Hunt
The Japan­ese hunt for endan­gered whales in the South­ern Oceans Whale Sanc­tu­ary has been shut down.

“All whal­ing activ­i­ties have come to a halt,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son from onboard the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Society’s ship Steve Irwin. No whales have been killed since Jan­u­ary 11th. The Japan­ese whal­ing fleet has been denied a sol­id week of whal­ing activ­i­ty. Our task now is to make that two weeks and then three weeks.”

As long as the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety and Green­peace keep the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet on the run, there will be no whal­ing activ­i­ty.

“I wish that Green­peace would be more coop­er­a­tive,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “How­ev­er we will con­tin­ue to feed them the coor­di­nates for the rest of the fleet as they tail the fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru. If we can­not work with Green­peace direct­ly we will work with them indi­rect­ly. The strength of any move­ment is in diver­si­ty.”

Jan­u­ary 17th found the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin chas­ing the whal­ing sup­ply ves­sel Ori­en­tal Blue­bird and three oth­er whal­ing ships east­ward along the line of Lat­i­tude of Six­ty Degrees South near the Eighty Six Degree East line of lon­gi­tude. This is approx­i­mate­ly 2000 miles from Fre­man­tle, Aus­tralia.

The Japan­ese whalers con­tin­ue to hold Aus­tralian cit­i­zen Ben­jamin Potts 28 and Giles Lane 35 of Great Britain. The Japan­ese gov­ern­ment has ordered their release but the whalers are defy­ing that order and refus­ing to release their hostages until Sea Shep­herd agrees to their demands. One of the demands is for Sea Shep­herd to dis­con­tin­ue oppos­ing whal­ing activ­i­ties. Cap­tain Wat­son respond­ed by refus­ing to acknowl­edge their demands and demand­ing instead that the hostages be released with­out con­di­tions.

The Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin will con­tin­ue to pur­sue ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing activ­i­ties for as long as pos­si­ble.

——

Aus­tralia to inter­cede in Safe Return of Sea Shep­herd activists

After two days being held hostage on the Yushin Maru No 2, two Sea Shep­herd anti-whal­ing activists may be returned with­in the next day to the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin by the autho­ri­sa­tion of the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to use the Cus­toms and Fish­eries patrol ves­sel Ocean­ic Viking as an inter­me­di­ary.

Aus­tralian For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter Stephen Smith said “What is required now to trans­fer those two men is the agree­ment of the Japan­ese Gov­ern­ment, which we have, the agree­ment of the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment, which we have,” Mr Smith said. “We now need the full and com­plete coop­er­a­tion of the two ves­sels, the two cap­tains and the two men con­cerned.”

Sea Shep­herd were refus­ing to meet the con­di­tions stip­u­lat­ed by the Cap­tain of the Yashin Maru No 2 to stop inter­fer­ing with the whal­ing fleet oper­a­tions for the trans­fer of the two crew mem­bers, with Cap­tain Paul Wat­son say­ing on the ABC 7.30 report “I don’t acqui­esce to ter­ror­ist demands and that’s what that is. Hold­ing hostages and mak­ing demands is a ter­ror­ist tac­tic.”

Asked to jus­ti­fy two mem­bers of his crew board­ing anoth­er ves­sel with­out autho­ri­sa­tion, which the Japan­ese have accused as an act or ter­ror­ism or pira­cy, Paul Wat­son replied “You can run around the ocean jump­ing on poacher’s ves­sels. They’re tar­get­ing endan­gered species and whale sanc­tu­ar­ies, in vio­la­tion of a glob­al mora­to­ri­um. The Unit­ed Nations’ world char­ter of nature on sec­tion of imple­men­ta­tion under Sec­tion 21 E allows for non-gov­ern­ment organ­i­sa­tions to uphold inter­na­tion­al con­ser­va­tion law. So, we are autho­rised to do that. These are poach­ers, I’m try­ing to get that through to peo­ple. They are poach­ers.”

Sec­tion 21 E of the World Char­ter for Nature, passed by the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly in 1982, states that “States and, to the extent they are able, oth­er pub­lic author­i­ties, inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions, indi­vid­u­als, groups and cor­po­ra­tions shall .…(e) safe­guard and con­serve nature in areas beyond nation­al juris­dic­tion.”

Sec­tion 24 of the char­ter says that “Each per­son has a duty to act in accor­dance with the pro­vi­sions of the present Char­ter; act­ing indi­vid­u­al­ly, in asso­ci­a­tion with oth­ers or through par­tic­i­pa­tion in the polit­i­cal process, each per­son shall strive to ensure that the objec­tives and require­ments of the present Char­ter are met.”

Accord­ing to the Aus­tralian For­eign min­is­ter, Stephen Smith on the ABC 7.30 Report, “the only con­di­tions that will be imposed here are con­di­tions that will be imposed by the Aus­tralian author­i­ties and the ‘Ocean­ic Viking’, and those con­di­tions will go to the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of this oper­a­tion.

It was report­ed by AAP that the trans­fer may take place in the next 24 hours. Accord­ing to Kim McCoy, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety, on board the Steve Irwin “We have just spo­ken very recent­ly with an agent on board the Ocean­ic Viking cus­toms ves­sel,” she said. “We have received offi­cial con­tact from them stat­ing that they’re just wait­ing for the Japan­ese to con­firm that they’re will­ing to accept those terms.”

“My under­stand­ing is that the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment is not going to impose any con­di­tions on us to stop harass­ing the whal­ing, because the whal­ing is ille­gal. The only con­di­tion that the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment wants to impose is the safe trans­fer, and of course we’re going to have to facil­i­tate a safe trans­fer, we don’t want to jeop­ar­dise any­one’s safe­ty dur­ing the trans­fer of Giles and Pottsy (Ben­jamin Potts) to our ship.

“Beyond that they’ve told us that there will be no addi­tion­al con­di­tions. In oth­er words, we are going to con­tin­ue inter­ven­ing against the ille­gal whal­ing activ­i­ty of the Japan­ese.” she said.

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son told Ali Moore from the ABC 7.30 Report “We’re not protest­ing their whal­ing oper­a­tions, we’re not protest­ing them. What we are doing is inter­fer­ing with ille­gal activ­i­ties. This is an inter­ven­tion­ist oper­a­tion not a protest organ­i­sa­tion.”

Sources:

* ABC 7.30 Report — Jan 17, 2008 — Govt con­sid­ers send­ing ‘Ocean­ic Viking’ to the res­cue
* ABC 7.30 Report — Jan 17, 2008 — Sea Shep­herd cap­tain reports from the high seas
* ABC News — Jan 17, 2008 — Sea Shep­herd will only accept ‘uncon­di­tion­al’ Govt help
* news.com.au, Jan 17, 2008 — Anti-whalers con­tact­ed over detainees
* Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­by 1982 World Char­ter for Nature

Repost from report on Syd­ney Indy­media, that con­tains all source links.
http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/story/australia-intercedes-safe-return-sea-shepherd-activists

——
Sea Shep­herd Sol­i­dar­i­ty Protest at Japan­ese Embassy, Berlin

16.1.2008
Peo­ple went to put pres­sure on offi­cials at the Japan­ese Embassy at Hiroshi­mas­trasse in Berlin today. They hung ban­ners on the fences of the Embassy demand­ing the imme­di­ate and uncon­di­tion­al release of the two Sea Shep­herd crew mem­bers tak­en hostage on 15 Jan­u­ary by the Japan­ese
Whal­ing Fleet.

For updates, see www.seashepherd.org

——

Sea Shep­herd Hostage Lon­don Sol­i­dar­i­ty Demo
16/1/08

Fifty pick­et the Japan­ese embassy in Lon­don in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Sea Shep­herd hostages (see pre­vi­ous posts). The embassy staff were not hap­py. Ban­ners read ‘Free the Hostages’, ‘Stop the the Whale Slaugh­ter’ and ‘Defend the Wild’. The pick­et got a lot of media cov­er­age with mul­ti­ple TV crews includ­ing one from Japan.

Updates post­ed here and at www.seashepherd.org

——

Sea Shep­herd demo, Barcelona
17.1.2008
Demon­stra­tors today held a protest out­side the Japan­ese Con­sul in Barcelona, also deliv­er­ing a let­ter to the Gen­er­al Con­sul demand­ing the imme­di­ate release of two Sea Shep­herd crew mem­bers cur­rent­ly held hostage by Japan­ese whalers.

A group of Sea Shep­herd sup­port­ers demon­strat­ed out­side the Japan­ese Con­sulate in Barcelona today, to call for the imme­di­ate release of Giles Lane and Ben­jamin Potts, cur­rent­ly held hostage aboard a Japan­ese whal­ing ship.

Inside, two peo­ple deliv­ered a let­ter to the Con­sul con­demn­ing the hostage tak­ing and demand­ing Japan­ese inter­ven­tion. Out­side, 150 leaflets were hand­ed out to work­ers and passers­by.

The Mossos turned up but every­thing was qui­et. Sol­i­dar­i­ty to Sea Shep­herd!

—–

NYC Protest for Sea Shep­herd Hostages

17.01.2008
Activists braved the cold of New York City today to protest yes­ter­day’s kid­nap­ping of Giles Lane and Ben­jamin Potts by an ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing ship. They were released ear­li­er today to the Ocean Viking (Aus­trali­a’s ship).

VIDEOS
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk1AKVRbR8I
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb7IM9VNY48

Activists braved the cold of New York City today to protest yes­ter­day’s kid­nap­ping of Giles Lane and Ben­jamin Potts by an ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing ship.

The duo are cur­rent­ly being held hostage on the ship, and demon­stra­tions and protests at Japan­ese embassies and con­sulates across the globe are being held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Sea Shep­herd crew.

Japan, we demand you stop the bloody slaugh­ter of inno­cent whales and dol­phins and return the kid­napped activists IMMEDIATELY with­out harm!

http://www.war-online.org

—–

17/01/08

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO2I38jBo‑E

Activists from NYC band­ed togeth­er with activists from Wash­ing­ton D.C. to protest the kid­nap­ping and hostage tak­ing of Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety mem­bers Giles Lane (UK) and Ben­jamin Potts (Aus­tralia).

Ani­mal lovers and envi­ron­men­tal­ists gath­ered out­side the Japan­ese embassy and demand­ed the release of Potts and Lane, who are regard­ed as heroes, and also demand­ed an end to the slaugh­ter of beau­ti­ful whales and dol­phins that go to feed Japan­ese bel­lies.

At the end of yes­ter­day’s protest activists received the call: The Sea Shep­herd heroes had just been released.