23/10/2024
The criminalisation of environmental defenders
Criminalisation through the law is accompanied by the delegitimisation of environmental defenders through the language, by launching vilification campaigns and by depicting climate activists as criminals and “ecoterrorists”.
Across the world, the legal goal posts are being changed to make criminalising climate and environmental defenders easier in a way that violates fundamental rights and the spirit of the rule of law.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/12/how-criminalisation-is-being-used-to-silence-climate-activists-across-the-world
On July 21, Watson was arrested by Danish police in Nuuk, Greenland's capital, a territory under Danish control, after docking his ship, the John DeJoria , to refuel before continuing his journey to the North Pacific to intercept the Japanese factory ship Kangei Maru . Despite the global moratorium on commercial whaling, Japan continues to kill various species of large cetaceans in its jurisdictional waters after leaving the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 2019.
As a sign of the advancement of the so-called harpoon diplomacy, the Japanese government announced before the 69th plenary meeting of the IWC — held from September 22 to 27 in Lima, Peru — that it included fin whales to the list of its commercial whaling operations. Fin whales are the second-largest species after the blue whale, and their population has not yet recovered from the impacts of industrial whaling. With this, Japan unilaterally adds this species to its whaling list of minke, Bryde, and six whales in the North Pacific.
The founder of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation and former president of Sea Shepherd was detained in the capital of Greenland under a secretly issued arrest warrant by the Japanese government, accusing him of damaging their whaling vessel and injuring a crew member while opposing Japanese whaling operations in Antarctica in 2010.
According to Minister Iwaya, Japan is requesting Watson's extradition from the Danish government as a matter of maritime law enforcement, rather than a whaling issue. However, ... Tbc in comments
