Jailed Just For Filming Canadian Seal Slaughter? (Paul Watson)

[Guest guest]

[The Canadian government just keeps getting sicker and

sicker. Rick]

 

 

 

 

Fw: The Halifax Herald - A shepherd on the lam -

Column by Silver Don Cameron

Sun, 24 Jul 2005 17:11:04 -0700

 

 

 

The Halifax Herald

A shepherd on the lam - Column by Silver Don Cameron

Sunday, July 24th, 2005

 

 

After leaving Halifax, I drove to Cape Breton Island

to the Farley and Claire Mowat " safe house " . While

there we had dinner with Silver Don Cameron and his

wife at the Auberge Acadienne. I had last seen Silver

Don way back in 1976 when my Greenpeace crew shared

the same boarding house with Brian Davies and his IFAW

crew. Silver Don was there covering the seal slaughter

as a reporter. That was our first campaign to

interfere with the massacre of seals. Almost thirty

years later, the fight to protect the seals continues.

There really is no rest on Planetary Duty.

 

The late Robert Hunter was at that boarding house also

and Silver Don quotes him in this column.

 

Silver Don Cameron wrote a column in the Halifax

Herald this week-end about our meeting.

 

The morning after our dinner together, I drove to my

sister Sharyn's place in Oak Bay, New Brunswick to

visit with her and her husband Peter and my Nephew

Trevor and his wife Shiva.

 

The next day I drove to Portland, Maine and flew back

to the West coast.

 

Canada apparently has a summons for me on three

counts. The first is for operating a Canadian vessel

in Canadian waters without a Canadian licensed Master.

The second count is for operating a Canadian

registered vessel in Canadian waters without a

Canadian licensed Mate and the third count is for

failing to identify the master of the vessel when it

wintered Canadian waters.

 

I have been the Captain and operator of the Farley

Mowat since we first flew the Canadian flag in March

of 2002. I have operated the same ship since 1996. I

have had the ship in Canadian waters prior to the seal

hunt and I was never informed that there were manning

requirements. In fact, the Registrar of shipping

specifically said that there were not manning

requirements for a Canadian registered pleasure craft

as outlined in the Canada Shipping Act. In fact it is

actually illegal for a Canadian registered non-revenue

paid vessel to operate in Canada with a Master who is

a Canadian resident. So if I had a Canadian resident

as Master, I would be in violation and apparently I am

in violation for not having a Canadian resident as

Master. Although I am a Canadian citizen, I am not a

Canadian resident.

 

This is of course harassment and persecution,

something that I am well used to dealing with over the

last three decades with reference to Canada and the

obscenity called the seal slaughter.

 

I have found out that the paddy wagon was present at

Dalhousie University, not because they were going to

arrest me, (they insist they were not there to take me

into custody but to serve me with a summons to appear

in court.) but because they said that my " reputation "

made for the possibility of arrest. I guess they

thought that I would assault the officers for serving

me with the summons.

 

I was not served and since I am back in Canada now,

they won't be serving me before the August 25th date

that they have scheduled me for court in

Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. A good thing

because I have plans to be patrolling in the Galapagos

on that date looking for poachers. And yes, I will be

the Captain of my Canadian registered ship in the

Galapagos.

 

What bothers me is that despite the complete video

documentation of the violent assault on my crew by

sealers in March of this year, despite the sealers

having been identified and despite one sealer telling

an RCMP officer that he was proud to have slugged my

crew, no charges have been laid against any of the

sealers.

 

Justice is not blind in Canada. In fact Justice allows

for violence against seal defenders and prohibits the

documentation of the illegal acts and the cruelty of

the sealers.

 

Je suis Canadien unfortunately.

 

I will of course answer to these charges at some date

in the future. I'm sure they will attempt to serve me

again but I intend to appear in court when it is

convenient for me to do so and not when I am ordered

to do so.

 

Eleven of my crew are scheduled to appear in Court in

Charlottetown in September on charges of approaching a

seal hunt with the intent to document the killing of

seals. For that they face a year in jail and up to

$100,000 in fines.

 

Captain Paul Watson

 

The story can be found at:

 

http://www.herald.ns.ca/cgi-bin/home/displaystory?2005/07/24+122.raw+NovaScotian\

+2005/07/24

 

or pasted below:

 

Sunday, July 24, 2005 Back The Halifax Herald Limited

 

--

 

File

Paul Watson is captain of the Sea Shepherd

Conservation Society's boat, the Farley Mowat. While

in Halifax recently, police tried to charge him with

operating in Canadian waters without a

Canadian-certified captain or first mate.

 

A shepherd on the lam

 

By SILVER DONALD CAMERON / First Words

 

Paul Watson, having delivered his lecture, is running

down a staircase in the Dalhousie Student Union

building, hotly pursued by the police. Escaping to the

street, he squirrels himself away in a nearby building

and watches the police searching for him, a paddy

wagon standing by. When they leave, he slips away into

the night.

 

This is Captain Paul Watson, who was in Nova Scotia

for a joint board meeting of the Sierra Clubs of

Canada and the United States. Founder and president of

the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a founding

member of Greenpeace, skipper of the 180-foot

long-range, ice-class conservation ship Farley Mowat,

Watson is - in Mowat's words - " the world's most

aggressive, most determined, most active and most

effective defender of wildlife. "

 

So why was he on the lam?

 

Watson didn't really know. All he knew was that the

police were waiting for him. When a cop called out to

him, he ran - and the cop ran after him. Seeing the

paddy wagon, Watson concluded that he was probably

facing arrest for something like " conspiracy to

violate the Seal Protection Regulations. "

 

Did you know about these fork-tongued regulations?

They " protect " seals by prohibiting protesters from

coming within half a mile of the people who are

smashing in the seals' heads. Only licensed

" observers " can go to the hunt, and observation

licences cannot be granted to anyone likely to impede

the killing.

 

As Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente notes, no

matter how you feel about the seal hunt - she believes

that most Canadians oppose it - " it is a terrible

black eye for Canada. " The only thing many foreigners

know about Canada is that " we kill defenseless baby

animals so that a bunch of rich women can wear

seal-fur coats. "

 

The seal kill - which is neither a " hunt, " nor a

" harvest " - is reputedly the largest mass slaughter of

wildlife in the world, and the government of Canada

vigorously supports it. The Department of Former

Fisheries and Empty Oceans set a quota of 320,000

seals this spring, one of the largest quotas in

history - did you know that? - and annually sends out

a whole task force of Coast Guard icebreakers, DFO

officials, mounted policemen and helicopters to

support the hunt and subvert the protests.

 

Last March, Paul Watson took an international team of

animal rights activists aboard the Farley Mowat, and

sailed to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. On the ice, 18

protesters were attacked by sealers brandishing

hakapiks, the steel-spiked clubs used to kill seals.

The attack was videotaped; you can see it at

www.seashepherd.org. With this evidence, the

protesters laid assault complaints with the RCMP.

 

Instead of arresting the sealers, however, the

Horsemen brought charges against the protesters for

contravening the Seal Protection Regulations - using

the protesters' own videotape to show that the

protesters were within half a mile of the sealers. The

regulations, of course, say nothing about a situation

in which the sealers go after the protesters, only the

other way around. The matter goes to trial in

September.

 

This is not law enforcement: this is outright

persecution. Winking at violence and crafting

regulations designed to pulverize dissent is not

merely an illegitimate reaction to opposition; it is a

Stalinist insult to democracy.

 

Not in my name, Minister.

 

And Paul Watson? He couldn't be charged under the

regulations, since he was on the ship, and not within

half a mile of the affray. But he has been charged

with conspiracy before, and he believed that was the

charge on which he was to be arrested at Dalhousie.

 

In fact it wasn't; the cops were there to serve him a

summons for operating in Canadian waters without a

Canadian-certified captain or first mate. This is

clearly a technicality, since Watson has 30 years of

experience operating vessels both in and out of

Canada, and in places like Labrador and Antarctica.

This spring, the Watson's ship uneventfully weathered

storms which sank two sealing vessels and seriously

damaged others. The government is once again using the

law to persecute its opponents.

 

That's contemptible. The government may find Watson

intemperate, discomfiting and uncompromising - but he

is a citizen of this country with the right to express

his convictions in actions as well as in words. The

government has no business treating such citizens as

enemies.

 

The over-arching issue of our time, said the late Bob

Hunter, Watson's friend and fellow Greenpeace founder,

is " whether or not we come to terms with the politics

of Earth and sky, evolution and transformation, God

and nature. Otherwise, in our lifetimes, we shall

suffer the enactment of the saga of Genesis, our

expulsion from paradise and the fall of nature

itself. "

 

That's Paul Watson's message, too. We are making war

on nature, and if we win, we die. We persecute such

prophets at our peril.

 

Silver Donald Cameron lives in D'Escousse Cape Breton