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All of Sea-Operation Thumbelina
On February 7th of this year I took part in a Greenpeace New Zealand whale
rescue operation.
Greenpeace New Zealand had learned that a Japanese whaling vessel, the
Toshi Maru no. 18, was to come into the Wellington harbour to pick up food
supplies and to drop off a crew member ('scientist') for treatment of an
injured thumb. While not aiming to prevent the crew member from receiving
medical attention, it was decided that here was an opportunity to expose to
the public the dire functions of the vessel and of the New Zealand
Governments' compliance with the slaughter of the rare minke whale by
allowing the ship into its' waters and by providing it with goods and
services.
Two Greenpeace zodiacs chased the whaler out to sea, avoiding the police
vessels which had been sent out to protect the whaler and to prevent
actions of protest taking place. We finally caught up with the whaling
ship, got alongside and prepared for six of us to board and to chain
ourselves to the vessel. It would most likely have been possible to do so
had the New Zealand Government not kindly provided the ship with, among
other things, police officers on board the whaler who violently prevented
all but two of us from staying on the ship. Boarding demonstrators were
kicked, punched and some were thrown into the sea. This was extremely
dangerous as we got roughly 50km out at sea in turbulent waters and could
have been drowned or sucked under the ship quite easily. Lives need not
have been put at such risk in that situation but police chose to do so.
They also chose to mash the face of one activist who managed to get on
board, cause another to suffer a dislocated shoulder, ! and bruises all
round.
However, despite injuries and despite the fact we didn't manage to hold up
Toshi Maru no. 18 as we had planned, we came out of the action pleased with
what we had achieved. Once we realised that the police were onto us and
that they had boarded before us, we knew our original plans were not as
easily attainable as we had envisioned. But we kept at it and got a lot of
media coverage in the process both here and in New Zealand and in Japan,
the United Kingdom and the U.S.A. The New Zealand Government was put into
the embarrassing position of being exposed as having helped to undermine an
international moratorium on whaling in this part of the world when in fact
it had itself voted for the moratorium prior to this event. Whalers are
also given the message that their whaling operations were unacceptable and
that they would be hassled everytime they tried to come here.
As an Anarcha-feminist I am against the exploitation of people and animals
and the earth. I am against violence against people, animals, and the
earth. The slaughtering of minke whales sickens me. The attitude that we as
humans can take what we want, do what we please with little or no
consideration of when and what we effect in the process sickens me. The
violence and alienation of State controlled society which supports such
attitudes, I reject. Therefore I will continue to act to undermine the
State and to protect the freedom of the earths' inhabitants, human and non
human, for the preservation of our world.