Showing Up
We almost didn’t meet. I arrived in Paris early on a Tuesday morning in January, jumped in a taxi and made my way to where his narrow boat was moored. It was supposed to be moved to a dry dock within the hour and I was racing the clock. If I was late, my morning with Paul Watson would be postponed. Luck intervened, and at the last minute the boatyard re-scheduled. When I finally reached Paul, a little breathless having run the last few blocks, he greeted me with his signature smile.
Paul and I spent the next four hours talking about his upbringing, his work and adventures; about Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd – its pioneering early years and its more recent corporate makeover; and his new endeavours, the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF) and Neptune’s Pirates. We also spoke about the art of protest and resistance in 2024, and the urgent need to protect our oceans and everything that lives in them. There was an immediacy to Paul’s comments: “You have no power in the future. Your power is in the present. Focus all your energies on doing what you can in the present.”
A month earlier Paul had celebrated his seventy-second birthday, but he shows no signs of slowing down. On the contrary, here is a man who is prolific in his writing, detailed in his research, and expansive in his perspective. While speaking about the continuing violence inflicted on our oceans and seas, and their inhabitants, Paul shared some advice he received early in his activist career: “Don’t be concerned about the odds against you. You’re here because it’s the right place to be, the right thing to do, and the right time to do it.”
When I left Paul that day, I realised his conviction remained as steadfast as ever.
Sunday July 21st
Nuuk is on Greenland’s western seaboard. It is the world’s northernmost capital and its colourful houses with their perfectly pitched roofs make for an idyllic coastline. It’s also home to Nuuk Port and Harbour, and despite being the largest port in Greenland, the entrance is often restricted due to hazardous tides and menacing ice. Leaving Nuuk can be equally challenging.
On Sunday morning Paul and a crew of twenty-five volunteers navigated the treacherous port entrance, safely docking their boat, the M/Y John Paul DeJoria. The vessel was to be re-fuelled and re-stocked and then sail north towards the Pacific. But as the gangway was attached a couple of dozen Danish federal police officers, including a SWAT team, boarded the boat, quickly making their way through its tight corridors and ordering everyone to the bridge. Passports were matched with crew and paperwork was filled out. Paul was handcuffed, escorted to a waiting a police van, and driven away.
An officer explained: “We were here and arrested Paul due to an international arrest order from Japan.”
Kangei Maru
The Kangei Maru is a death factory, a purpose-built slaughterhouse for the high seas. It was completed this year at a cost of forty million pounds, has a range of eight thousand miles and operates with a crew of a hundred – but few sail the ship, most cut up dying whales. The vessel is a critical part of Japan’s whaling fleet because it is the ‘mothership.’
Japan has shamelessly elevated the murdering of whales to a sadistically industrial scale. Kill ships track the mammals, pursuing them until they are physically exhausted. Then cannons are used to fire grenade-tipped harpoons directly at the whales. The process is crude and cruel, as shrapnel blast is highly imprecise. Death is rarely instantaneous, and it frequently takes up to 130 minutes for a whale to die. It is a living hell for the mammals who are tethered to the kill ships and dragged alongside during these final moments. Once the whales are dead, they are transferred to the mother ship where the process of cutting up the whales, called ‘flensing’, is carried out.
Japan has limited its murderous practices to its own territorial waters since a 2016 International Court of Justice ruling forbids them from so-called ‘whaling’ in international waters.
In May the Kangei Maru docked at Tokyo Port for a few days before travelling to Tohoku and Hokkaido, where it is believed it was put into operational use. Many anti-whalers are suspicious. Why is such a large slaughterhouse – measuring 370-feet and weighing 9,300-tons, complete with a slipway capable of hauling eighty-five feet long whales from the sea and a flensing deck the size of two basketball courts – needed for Japan’s coastal waters.
Paul speculated Japan’s whaling fleet may return to the Southern Ocean or Northern Pacific later this year and put them on notice: “What we’re doing is watching its movements, keeping tabs on it and preparing to intervene.” On July 12th the M/Y John Paul DeJoria, twenty-five volunteers, and Paul left Ireland bound for Japan via Nuuk.
Red Notice or Red Herring?
On Sunday, Paul was arrested in connection with an Interpol Red Notice issued by the Japanese government in 2012 for what was described as ‘anti-whaling’ activities – bizarrely, Paul was trying to save whales by placing his boat between the Japanese killing fleet and the mammals.
Red Notices are strange – they are basically a derivative of an arrest warrant. They’re not binding and place no legal obligation on a country to act. An Interpol spokesperson confirmed: “It is each member country’s decision whether to arrest an individual who is the subject of a Red Notice, which is not an international arrest warrant.”
Red Notices can also be withdrawn, and CPWF’s legal team believed this one had been. However, it now appears Japan may not have withdrawn it, but made it confidential:
“We’re completely shocked, as the Red Notice had disappeared a few months ago. We were surprised because it could mean that it had been erased or made confidential. We understand now that Japan made it confidential to lure Paul into a false sense of security.”
The focus and haste with which the Danish authorities acted is impressive – so impressive it is rare. The building of a mothership (named so with vicious irony) is rare, the last one was built over fifty years ago. The opaque nature of the 2012 Red Notice is not uncommon but one is left wondering about the peculiar timing. Did a veteran activist put the whole Japanese whaling industry on notice this week? And is manipulating Interpol their underhanded response?
Paul remains in custody and could face extradition to Japan.
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©2024 Sul Nowroz – Real Media staff writer
