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direct action
Anti-Whaling Activist Paul Watson Freed After Denmark Rejects Japan's Extradition Request
"My arrest has focused international attention on Japan's continuing illegal whaling operations and their intent to go back to the Southern Ocean," said Watson. "So, in fact, these five months have been an extension of the campaign."
Dec 17, 2024
The prominent anti-whaling activist Paul Watson was released Tuesday from prison in Greenland after Danish officials rejected a request by Japan to extradite him.
Watson was arrested in Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, in July due to a warrant issued by Japan in 2012, which alleged that Watson had interfered with a Japanese whaling vessel and caused injury to a crew member in 2010, according to The New York Times. He could have faced up to 15 years in jail if convicted.
"I am certainly relieved as this means I get to see my two little boys. That's really been my only concern this entire time. I understand the risks of what we do and sometimes you get arrested—although I am proud of the fact that I have never been convicted of a crime," Watson told the Guardian. Watson's two sons are aged three and eight.
To the outlet AFP, he said: "My arrest has focused international attention on Japan's continuing illegal whaling operations and their intent to go back to the Southern Ocean... So, in fact, these five months have been an extension of the campaign."
Watson, a Canadian American who co-founded Greenpeace and founded Sea Shepherd—a group that uses direct action to protect marine wildlife and oceans—was traveling in July with 25 volunteers on a mission to the North Pacific for the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF), which he started after leaving Sea Shepherd in 2022. When the vessel arrived in Nuuk, Greenland to refuel, Danish police arrested him.
The CPWF denounced the surprise arrest, which came as Watson planned to intercept a new Japanese factory whaling ship.
Watson was also featured in the Animal Planet television show Whale Wars that ran from 2008 until 2015, in which he led efforts to disrupt Japanese whaling on the high seas.
Japan has a long, complicated history with whaling. Whale meat was seen as an important protein for the country after World War II. Japan joined the International Whaling Commission, an international body that placed a moratorium on commercial whaling in the 1980s, in 1951. In 2019, Japan left the body and began catching whales commercially the same year, according to the International Whaling Commission.
In 2014, the International Court of Justice ruled against Japan in a case involving charges that Japan was using a scientific research program as a front for a commercial whaling venture in the Antarctic.
'Victory': Gas Drilling Project Paused After Greenpeace Occupies Platform in North Sea
"Today's events show that people power works!" a campaigner said. "Whether it is occupying a gas rig or challenging it in court, people will not be silent, we are standing up to the fossil fuel industry."
Jun 04, 2024
A Dutch court on Tuesday ordered a pause to a gas drilling initiative in the North Sea after Greenpeace activists occupied a platform owned by the company behind the project, leading the environmental group to declare "victory" as it pushes for an end to new fossil fuel infrastructure in Europe.
The activists sought to disrupt the work of Dutch energy company ONE-Dyas, which had just received the go-ahead for offshore drilling from the Dutch government last week and quickly sent the drilling platform to the site, which is about 12 miles from the German island of Borkum and straddles Dutch and German waters.
"The science is clear, we must stop digging and drilling for fossil fuels if we are to avoid the worst of climate chaos," Mira Jaeger, energy expert from Greenpeace Germany, said in a statement released earlier on Tuesday, before the court decision. "We cannot afford any new fossil fuel extraction projects. Not in the North Sea or anywhere else."
"Today's events show that people power works!" Jaeger said in another statement following the ruling. "Whether it is occupying a gas rig or challenging it in court, people will not be silent, we are standing up to the fossil fuel industry."
🔊VICTORY: The gas drilling platform currently occupied by @greenpeace_de and @greenpeaceNL activists has been ordered to stop their drilling activities by a Dutch court.
Resistance WORKS! #StopFossilGas https://t.co/MRhJZ2ZXiQ pic.twitter.com/5d6x2jzO6l
— Greenpeace International (@Greenpeace) June 4, 2024
Greenpeace, an environmental group that engages in nonviolent direct action, has previously occupied oil and gas rigs in the North Sea and elsewhere. Last year, the group's campaigners occupied a platform contracted by Shell, a multinational oil and gas company, as it made its way to work in U.K. waters.
The planned Borkum drilling project, which Greenpeace has said would threaten rocky reefs and a local nature reserve, has been the subject of a legal and regulatory fight in recent years. Environmental and community groups filed a lawsuit against it in Dutch court, and a judge halted the project for over a year starting in April 2023. However, following court-ordered changes, the Dutch state secretary for economic affairs and climate approved the project last week. On Monday, Offshore Energy, a trade publication, declared that the project, which it said involves an investment of more than $500 million, had "no more legal woes" and would produce gas by the end of the year. A Dutch official noted the importance of a domestic supply of natural gas in approving the project, Offshore Energy reported.
With the company moving quickly, Greenpeace activists aimed to block the installation of the platform on Tuesday. Five of the 21 who went to sea for the action occupied the platform, called Prospector 1, and tied themselves to pillars, according to Greenpeace. The occupation lasted 8 hours, ending when news came of the court ruling.
Tuesday's ruling suspended the approval granted by the Dutch state secretary for economic affairs, and is to be followed by a hearing on June 12. The decision came at the request of environmental and community groups, which submitted an application on Friday for "provisional relief." The groups aim to block the drilling initiative entirely, arguing that ONE-Dyas should abandon its "legal tricks" and "accept reality and abandon the project."
Greenpeace, which was one of the plaintiffs in the application, reiterated its demand on Tuesday that the project be permanently canceled, while calling for the E.U. to abandon all fossil fuel infrastructure projects.
"The Borkum project is just the tip of the iceberg: in Europe, fossil fuel companies are pushing European states into such massive, unnecessary investments just like TotalEnergies’ LNG terminal in France, or OMV’s Neptun Deep gas drilling project in Romania," the first Greenpeace statement said. "But the European Union can and must put its member states on a path away from fossil fuels, by banning new fossil fuel projects and investing in an energy system based on renewables and energy sufficiency."
Protesters Arrested Disrupting Macy's Parade Over Genocide in Gaza
"What we are witnessing right now in Palestine is one of the greatest human rights issues of our time," said Seven Circles Alliance.
Nov 23, 2023
A small number of demonstrators were arrested on Thursday for disrupting the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Sixth Avenue in New York City to protest Israel's "ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians" in the Gaza Strip.
"Floats, marching bands, and the parade's iconic balloons were navigating around the protesters as cops moved in to make arrests," the New York Daily Newsreported. "Protestors clad in white jumpsuits, some emblazoned with the words 'Colonialism,' 'Militarism,' and 'Ethnic Cleansing' poured fake blood on one another and the roadway."
Taking credit for the direct action, Seven Circles Alliance said in a statement that the coalition of climate, social justice, and political activists is calling on the United States to "cease its support for Israel's occupation of Palestine" and for both the U.S. and Israel to recognize the International Criminal Court (ICC).
"A free Palestine and the liberation and decolonization of all people, everywhere is deeply linked with the climate movement," the alliance asserted. "If the powers of the West are unabashedly supporting genocide and ethnic cleansing, it is crystal clear that they will not budge an inch in addressing climate breakdown and preventing societal collapse. Climate is a human rights issue, and what we are witnessing right now in Palestine is one of the greatest human rights issues of our time."
The direction action wasn't the only expression of solidarity with Palestine during Thursday's parade. Someone riding on the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe float also held up a Palestinian flag.
Israeli airstrikes and raids in Gaza have killed more than 14,500 Palestinians, including over 6,000 children, since Israel declared war in response to a Hamas-led attack on October 7. The assault has also displaced about three-quarters of the besieged strip's 2.3 million residents and devastated civilian infrastructure.
Massive street protests around the world over the past several weeks have pressured political leaders to demand a cease-fire and path toward peace in Gaza, while genocide experts and other critics of Israel's war—including some Israelis—have advocated for action by the ICC.
Some U.S. lawmakers have also called for a cease-fire, but President Joe Biden has stressed his "unwavering" support for Israel and asked Congress to authorize $14.3 billion for the war effort, on top of the $3.8 billion in military aid that Israel already gets from the United States annually.
A four-day pause in fighting is scheduled to begin at midnight to allow for the release of 150 Palestinian women and children from Israeli prisons as well as 50 hostages held by Hamas.
"A temporary pause in the violence is not enough," U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American in Congress, said earlier this week. "We must move with urgency to save as many lives as possible and achieve a permanent cease-fire agreement."
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