Whale activists in danger - please help

[Guest guest]

Dear friend,

 

We urgently need your help to protect our activists in Korea and

stop a whale meat factory from being built.

 

http://act.greenpeace.org/ams/e?a=1770 & amp;s=gen2

 

As many of you know, we recently uncovered plans by the city of

Ulsan in South Korea to build a factory for butchering whales. We

immediately set up a camp near the site to expose the plan and

oppose it with our presence: we called it our Whale Embassy.

 

The city council is highly embarrassed by our presence, and has

tried every way they can to shut us down and shut us up. Yesterday

they gave us an official eviction notice with a DEADLINE OF THIS

MONDAY, MAY 16TH to take down our geodesic dome tent, remove our

educational exhibits about whales, and get out of the way.

 

We've said we'll be happy to leave -- just as soon as the city

cancels the plans for the whale factory.

 

http://act.greenpeace.org/ams/e?a=1770 & amp;s=gen2

 

Whale campaigner Jim Wickens says: " It is quite clear that they want

to stifle any criticism of their plans to build the factory... We

have told them that any attempts to evict us forcibly will reflect

very badly on their international image. "

 

There have already been several attempts at intimidation, official

and unofficial. According to Wickens: " Last night at four in the

morning four local fishermen turned up looking for trouble, luckily

there were others awake to come and help. We have been tipped off

that in Korea in sensitive political protests, the authorities

sometimes hire thugs to do the dirty work. There is a distinct

possibility that they may do this in the form of fake fishermen

coming to beat us up, or even inflaming local fishermen to actually

do it for them. "

 

The factory Jim and his fellow activists are opposing will be used

to process whales which have been " accidentally " killed by

entanglement in fishing nets. In reality, there's nothing

accidental about these killings. Fishing fleets around the world

report annually how many whales they kill by accidentally nettings,

and this usually amounts to one or two whales for an entire nation's

fleet. In Korea, which allows the sale of meat from accidental

kills and where a whale carcass can be worth $100,000, the annual

kill rate can be up to a 100 times that.

 

The picture at left is of an " accidentally " caught juvenile minke

whale, which we witnessed butchered and sold for $30,000.

 

The man with the power to protect our activists AND stop the whale

factory is the town's mayor, Mr. Park Maeng-woo. Unfortunately, the

mayor is being pressured by fisherman and local businessmen, like

the deputy vice president of Hyundai corporation, who strongly

support building the factory. If Mr. Park Maeng-woo is to make a

balanced decision, he needs all the facts. He needs to know that

the world is watching, and that people who don't want to see whales

killed for commerce are paying attention to what he does about our

activists and the factory.

 

Please, time is very short: send a message right now to Mr. Park

Maeng-woo and let him know we want our activists protected and we

want the whale factory stopped.

 

Whale activists in danger - please help