The arrest of Paul Watson is just the latest in a series of detentions and arrests of environmental protestors
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The environmental activist, Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace and founder of Sea Shepherd, has been arrested in Greenland under an international arrest warrant issued by the Japanese authorities. Reports say that he was arrested after the ship he was on stopped off in Greenland to refuel.
Known for its controversial environmental activism that has led detractors to describe Sea Shepherd as ‘pirates’ and accusing the group of using violence to achieve its environmental aims, the Sea Shepherd boat – and Watson – were said to have been en route to the Northwest Passage to intercept a huge new Japanese factory whaling ship at the time of Watson’s arrest. The authorities in Greenland say that Watson will be brought before a district court where police will request his detention before deciding whether he should be extradited to Japan.
A statement issued by the Captain Paul Watson Foundation claimed that his arrest is connected to a previous Red Notice issued for Watson’s anti-whaling activities in the Antarctic. The statement goes on to say that Watson’s arrest ‘comes as a surprise since the Foundation’s lawyers had reported that the Red Notice had been withdrawn. However, it appears that Japan had made the notice confidential to facilitate Paul’s travel for the purpose of making an arrest’.
On 1 July 2019, Japan resumed commercial whaling after leaving the International Whaling Commission (IWC). In 2021 (the last year for which figures are available), Japan caught 171 minke whales, 187 Bryde’s whales and 25 sei whales. It has recently announced that it will also begin to hunt fin whales. The factory whaling ship that Sea Shepherd was said to have been on the way to intercept is the 9300-tonne Kangei Maru, which processes whales caught by smaller vessels. Being able to store up to 600 tonnes of whale meat, it’s able to remain at sea for long periods.
This is not the only arrest of environmental activists in the past few months. Perhaps the world’s most famous environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, was detained twice on one day in April by Dutch police after she and a group of protestors blocked roads in The Hague in protest at Dutch fossil fuel subsidies. Also in April, dozens of climate activists were arrested in New York during an Earth Week protest over Citibank’s funding of fossil fuel industries.
In May, 175 climate protestors were arrested in France as they targeted TotalEnergies. And, in Uganda seven environmental activists were arrested for their part in the Stop the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (StopEACOP).
In June an environmental activist was arrested in Paris after sticking a poster over a Monet painting in order to draw attention to global warming.
At the start of July ten members of the environmental activist group Mother Nature Cambodia were sentenced to between six and eight years in prison after being convicted of plotting against the government. Also in July, five climate activists from the highly controversial group, Just Stop Oil, were given four year jail sentences over a conspiracy to block London’s M25 motorway. It was the longest sentence ever imposed for a non-violent protest in Britain and has been condemned by human rights organisations.
Although many of these activists have been engaged in protests and publicity stunts that have divided public opinion an October 2023 investigation by the UK’s Guardian newspaper claims that criminalisation is being increasingly used by governments around the world to silence environmental activists. While the campaign group Global Witness claims that in the UK more than 7000 people have been arrested for climate activism since 2019.
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