Photo: Trucks with digital billboards displaying a photo of Paul Watson and calling for his release in New York. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Reuters.
This past summer, the Associated Press reported: “Greenland police said they apprehended veteran environmental activist and anti-whaling campaigner Paul Watson on an international arrest warrant issued by Japan.”
Toronto-born Watson, who is now 73 years of age, was arrested on Sunday July 21 when his ship docked in Nuuk, Greenland.
Greenland considers Watson a flight-risk so he has been detained in custody for the past 60 days (as of September 18).
On September 4, a court ruled that he must remain in custody until at least October 2 as a legal review of his Japan’s extradition request continues.
Watson would face a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison in Japan.
Le Monde has explained: “[Watson] was arrested in July in Nuuk, the capital of the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland, on the basis of a 2012 arrest warrant issued by Japan, which accuses him of causing damage to one of its whaling ships in 2010 in the Antarctic. It says he also injured a Japanese crew member with a stink bomb intended to disrupt the whalers’ activities and has asked Denmark to extradite him to face trial.”
Watson has countered: “I didn’t do anything, and even if I did the sentence would be [a fine of] 1,500 kroner [$223] in Denmark – not even a prison sentence – while Japan wants to sentence me to 15 years.”
BBC also reports: “French President Emmanuel Macron’s office has asked Denmark not to extradite Paul Watson, and there has been vocal support from legendary actress turned animals rights activist Brigitte Bardot. Meanwhile a petition calling for Mr Watson’s release has surpassed 120,000 signatures.”
The timing of the arrest
While the arrest reportedly relates to an incident more than 12 years ago, it came when Watson was en route to the North Pacific to confront a Japanese factory whaling ship. The Japan Times has reported: “The brand-new, nearly 9,300-ton lead vessel for Japan’s whaling flotilla departed Tuesday [May 21] on its maiden hunt — heralding a new era for an industry defended by the government as an integral part of Japanese culture.”
The illegality of whaling
The International Marine Mammal Project has previously noted: “In 2014, the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan’s so-called ‘scientific’ whaling in Antarctica was really for commercial purposes and therefore violates the IWC Convention. Japan stopped the Antarctic hunts for one year, and then renewed them with 1/3 the quota previously for minke whales (from 1,000 per year down to 333 per year).”
Criminalization a global trend
Last week, Global Witness issued their Missing Voices report that notes: “Murder continues to be a common strategy for silencing defenders and is unquestionably the most brutal. But as this report shows, lethal attacks often occur alongside wider retaliations against defenders who are being targeted by government, business and other non-state actors with violence, intimidation, smear campaigns and criminalisation. This is happening in every region of the world and in almost every sector.”
And last year, The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom reported: “Climate and environmental justice groups report a significant increase in draconian, and often arbitrary, charges for peaceful protesters as part of what they claim is a playbook of tactics to vilify, discredit, intimidate and silence activists.”
That article continues: “The Guardian has also found striking similarities in the way governments from Canada and the US to Guatemala and Chile, from India and Tanzania to the UK, Europe and Australia, are cracking down on activists trying to protect the planet. The legal contexts vary, but the charges – such as subversion, illicit association, terrorism and tax evasion – are often vague and time-consuming to disprove, while a growing number of countries, including the US and UK, have passed controversial anti-protest laws ostensibly intended to protect national security or so-called critical infrastructure such as fossil fuel pipelines.”
PBI accompanied defenders
Examples of criminalized defenders accompanied by PBI include social leaders in San Luis de Palenque, Colombia (for protesting against a Canadian oil and gas company), Maya Q’eqchi’ journalist Carlos Choc in Guatemala (for reporting on the Fenix mine that was first developed by a Canadian mining company), the Guapinol River defenders in Honduras (who oppose the Los Pinares-Ecotek mining-petcoke thermoelectric-iron oxide pelletizing plant megaproject), and Nahuatl water protector Miguel López Vega in Mexico (for defending the Metlapanapa River from an industrial park).
PBI-Canada has also highlighted that 74 people – land defenders, allies, legal observers and members of the media – were criminalized during three large-scale raids by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) on Wet’suwe’ten territory in British Columbia during the resistance to the Coastal GasLink gas pipeline being built on Indigenous lands without consent.
UN Special Rapporteur
The UN Special Rapporteur for human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, has commented: “These defenders are basically trying to save the planet, and in doing so save humanity. These are people we should be protecting, but are seen by governments and corporations as a threat to be neutralised. In the end it’s about power and economics.”
And as Watson has highlighted: “If the ocean dies, we all die. The ocean is the life support system for the planet, providing 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe and regulating climate. Providing oxygen and sequestering carbon dioxide is the major contribution of plankton. The whales are the primary species that fertilize the phytoplankton. In order to restore phytoplankton populations we need to restore whale populations and we need to abolish the industrialized exploitation of biodiversity in the ocean.”
We continue to follow this.
Video: Honest Government Ad | Japan vs Paul Watson by The Juice Media (language warning).
