Rainbow Warrior Impounded by Japan Coast Guard
Copyright © 2000 Reuters
July 22, 2000
By Elaine Lies
OKINAWA, Japan (Reuters) - Greenpeace activists slammed Japan on Saturday for its heavy-handed security around a world leaders' summit after the coast guard impounded their flagship, the Rainbow Warrior.
Local police searched the ship on Saturday after it was boarded by some 50 Japanese coast guard personnel late on Friday and then impounded.
It will most likely be held until the Group of Eight summit of powerful nations ends on this subtropical southerly Japanese island on Sunday.
``The vessel is seized,'' Greenpeace International Coordinator Michelle Sheather told Reuters, speaking by telephone from aboard the Rainbow Warrior in port at the Okinawa capital, Naha.
A Japanese patrol boat, some 46 meters (150 ft) long, had been chained to the Rainbow Warrior and another was moored a few meters away, making it impossible for the boat to leave, she said.
``We're negotiating for shore passes but it looks as if they're going to try to restrict our land access too,'' she said.
About 15 people remained aboard the vessel and watched as police searched documents and radio transmission logs.
A coast guard official said the ship was detained because it had broken the law.
``The Rainbow Warrior made unlawful moves with their protest, and said they would do it again,'' the coast guard official said. ``So we detained them to prevent further unlawful moves.''
On Friday, the Rainbow Warrior had defied a one nautical mile ban on boats approaching the venue of the G8 annual summit meeting at a resort on a remote peninsula on this southern Japanese island.
The act was part of a protest against logging practices by G8 members that resulted in the arrest of four Greenpeace activists, and the environmental pressure group had said it planned to carry out similar protests during the three-day summit that ends on Sunday.
Stringent Security
Junko Sakurai, Greenpeace press officer, said the detention was hard to understand.
``We are not protesting against the G8 itself, just asking them to fulfil their responsibilities,'' she said. ``If they don't do that, what is the meaning of a G8 summit being held?''
She attributed the police response possibly to damaged pride because the ship had managed to slip through the heavy security net thrown around the summit.
Some 22,000 police are on hand from across Japan, manning road blocks and standing on street corners, batons in hand.
A special underwater unit of divers patrols waters near the summit site, where eight destroyers and 140 boats also cruise.
The one nautical mile exclusion zone has been slapped into place for the duration of the summit.
Sheather said she understood that tight security was the norm around summit venues anywhere, but added that the temporary nature of the exclusion zone made the ship's detention appear especially arbitrary.
``They appear to have been looking for reasons to detain us,'' she said. ``The only thing they could technically tie to us is that the four people they arrested came from the ship.''
The four were to appear before prosecutors on Saturday and Sheather expected them to be jailed at least until the summit ended, if not for longer.
Greenpeace activists have been arrested twice before in Japan, most recently in May. Each time they were detained for 11 days.
The G8 comprises the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Britain, Canada and Russia.
(Updates with Greenpeace comments in paras 12-14)
By Elaine Lies
OKINAWA, Japan, July 22 (Reuters) - Greenpeace activists slammed Japan on Saturday for its heavy-handed security around a world leaders' summit after the coast guard impounded their flagship, the Rainbow Warrior.
Local police searched the ship on Saturday after it was boarded by some 50 Japanese coast guard personnel late on Friday and then impounded.
It will most likely be held until the Group of Eight summit of powerful nations ends on this subtropical southerly Japanese island on Sunday.
``The vessel is seized,'' Greenpeace International Coordinator Michelle Sheather told Reuters, speaking by telephone from aboard the Rainbow Warrior in port at the Okinawa capital, Naha.
A Japanese patrol boat, some 46 metres (150 ft) long, had been chained to the Rainbow Warrior and another was moored a few metres away, making it impossible for the boat to leave, she said.
``We're negotiating for shore passes but it looks as if they're going to try to restrict our land access too,'' she said.
About 15 people remained aboard the vessel and watched as police searched documents and radio transmission logs.
A coast guard official said the ship was detained because it had broken the law.
``The Rainbow Warrior made unlawful moves with their protest, and said they would do it again,'' the coast guard official said. ``So we detained them to prevent further unlawful moves.''
On Friday, the Rainbow Warrior had defied a one nautical mile ban on boats approaching the venue of the G8 annual summit meeting at a resort on a remote peninsula on this southern Japanese island.
The act was part of a protest against logging practices by G8 members that resulted in the arrest of four Greenpeace activists, and the environmental pressure group had said it planned to carry out similar protests during the three-day summit that ends on Sunday.
Stringent Security
Junko Sakurai, Greenpeace press officer, said the detention was hard to understand.
``We are not protesting against the G8 itself, just asking them to fulfil their responsibilities,'' she said. ``If they don't do that, what is the meaning of a G8 summit being held?''
She attributed the police response possibly to damaged pride because the ship had managed to slip through the heavy security net thrown around the summit.
Some 22,000 police are on hand from across Japan, manning road blocks and standing on street corners, batons in hand.
A special underwater unit of divers patrols waters near the summit site, where eight destroyers and 140 boats also cruise.
The one nautical mile exclusion zone has been slapped into place for the duration of the summit.
Sheather said she understood that tight security was the norm around summit venues anywhere, but added that the temporary nature of the exclusion zone made the ship's detention appear especially arbitrary.
``They appear to have been looking for reasons to detain us,'' she said. ``The only thing they could technically tie to us is that the four people they arrested came from the ship.''
The four were to appear before prosecutors on Saturday and Sheather expected them to be jailed at least until the summit ended, if not for longer.
Greenpeace activists have been arrested twice before in Japan, most recently in May. Each time they were detained for 11 days.
The G8 comprises the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Britain, Canada and Russia.
((Okinawa newsroom +81-980-464621. tokyo.newsroom+reuters.com))