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Sovereignty debate surrounds nature park
By Gustavo González
Santiago, Chile, Jan. 19 (IPS)-- Chilean politicians say the
declaration of protection for Pumalín Park, in the southern region
of the country, is a violation of national security. The park is the
property of US millionaire Douglas Tompkins.
Chilean senators want to take the controversial decision of declaring
the park a nature reserve to the National Security Council (COSENA),
saying it is a sovereignty issue. But environmentalists say the protection
declaration is an “inconsequential act.”
The 298,562-hectare park, situated in the southern province of Palena,
in Chile’s famed Lakes Region, is the result of seven years of
negotiations between Tompkins and Chilean authorities.
The process culminated Dec. 9 with the tycoon and President Ricardo
Lagos putting their signatures to an agreement.
The 200,000 hectares of native temperate rainforest are safe from exploitation
by logging companies. It is a nature preserve that will be managed by
a non-profit foundation in which Tompkins and Chilean entities will
participate.
But 28 of Chile’s 47 senators, including four from the co-governing
Christian Democratic Party, believe the new status of these lands would
prevent the construction of roads and other projects considered indispensable
for the development and integration of the area with the rest of the
country.
They asked that the agreement be submitted to COSENA, a body created
by the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) and is headed by the
president, with the participation of the commanders of the armed forces
and of four civilian officials.
Bringing COSENA into the matter is problematic because it is one of
the objectionable legacies of the dictatorship, agree activists Sara
Larraín, head of Sustainable Chile, Manuel Baquedano, president
of the Instituto de Ecología Política, and Gonzalo Villarino,
executive director of Greenpeace-Chile.
The three, consulted by Tierramérica, pointed to the inconsistency
of the Christian Democrat senators, whose party has long advocated eliminating
COSENA, and they applauded the fact that President Lagos, of the Socialist
Party, has refused the lawmakers’ request.
Hernán Larraín, senator of the right-wing Independent
Democratic Union party, told Tierramérica that the 28 legislators
represent “a vast majority” that believes COSENA’s intervention
is necessary “because the park agreement creates many concerns
with respect to the limitations of Chilean sovereignty.”
The conflict alludes to equality under the law, given that “special
treatment is being given a foreigner.” It is up to the state “to
determine the occupation of the territory and the preservation of sectors
whose characteristics contribute to improving the environment,”
said the senator.
“There are doubts about the effect of the declaration of a nature
sanctuary and the restrictions it could mean as far as developing infrastructure
for communications, services and roads, and as far as resolutions by
national courts on expropriation for the necessities of the common good,”
Christian Democrat senator Jorge Pizarro said in a conversation with
Tierramérica.
“If national security means protecting our natural resources, there
is no contradiction in what Tompkins is doing,” says Jenia Jofré,
president of the National Committee Pro Defense of Fauna and Flora.
According to Raúl Sohr, an expert in defense issues: “The
idea that sovereignty is lost is absurd. There is no loss of sovereignty
in any territory of the country that is acquired by an individual.”
“If there is the desire to build a road, the same expropriation
laws will be applied that are applied in the rest of the country,”
he said.
Sara Larraín stressed that both the president of the Senate,
Christian Democrat Andrés Zaldívar, and commander of the
army Luis Emilio Cheyre, say it is not appropriate in this case to convene
COSENA, of which they are both members.
It is stipulated in the agreement that land would be set aside for building
roads, she said. The foreign investments Tompkins has brought to Chile
are the only ones aimed at preserving forests instead of exploiting
them, added the activist.
Analyst Sohr and the environmentalists believe the political reaction
against Tompkins is due to his ecological stance.
The senators never mentioned national security when foreign investments
were made to exploit natural resources, which they instead see as “a
factor for national development,” they said.
“In 30 years, the areas that are being preserved will be of incalculable
value in terms of ecosystems. The activities to be carried out there
are friendly to the environment, such as ecotourism,” said Baquedano.
“The deeper issue is the lack of vision of those (who are opposed
to the nature sanctuary), who think of the country in the short term,
and not in the long term,” added the head of the Instituto de Ecología
Política.
Senator Larraín, meanwhile, denies there is a double standard
that favors exploitation of resources while discriminating against Tompkins
for his conservationist position, though he does criticize the millionaire
for his support of what is known as “deep ecology”.
“We have serious concerns about deep ecology, because it is an
extreme position in environmentalist thought, and in the end seeks the
depopulation of the territory,” says the senator.
“As someone said as a caricature, deep ecology prefers trees over
people. But we believe people are more important than trees. Nature
should be at the service of man, not the reverse,” concludes the
right-wing lawmaker.
Animal-rights activist arrested
Case shines light on FBI’s efforts to dismantle
liberation fronts
By Paul Shukovsky
Jan. 15-- An agent with the FBI’s domestic terrorism squad
arrested an animal rights activist yesterday for allegedly lying to
a Seattle federal grand jury investigating an arson attack on an Olympia
forest-product company. The complaint against Allison Lance Watson provides
a rare window into the FBI’s efforts to dismantle the Animal Liberation
Front and Earth Liberation Front, which the bureau considers to be among
the greatest domestic terrorism threats facing the nation.
Watson faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if
she is convicted on the charge of making a false statement to the grand
jury. Led into the courtroom in shackles, Watson was released without
having to post a cash bond pending a preliminary hearing next month.
She is the wife of Paul Watson, most well-known in Washington state
for leading the protests in 1999 when the Makah Tribe resumed hunting
gray whales.
The government’s case laid out in Special Agent Fernando Gutierrez’s
complaint reveals how the FBI is working to find the perpetrators of
such actions as the 2001 firebombing of the Center for Urban Horticulture
at the University of Washington. To date, the bureau has cracked few
cases involving the Animal Liberation Front or the Earth Liberation
Front because the groups work in small, well-disciplined cells that
communicate with others through secure Internet channels.
But to crack more cases, federal investigators are focusing on members
of environmental and animal-rights groups outside the mainstream who
claim they don’t participate in arson or vandalism. Yesterday demonstrators
from some of those groups gathered outside the federal courthouse in
Seattle to protest what they believe are repressive tactics of government
investigators.
In May 2000, the Watsons were hauling equipment between the Southern
California office of Paul Watson’s Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
and the organization’s office in Friday Harbor. For that purpose,
said Paul Watson, they rented a Penske truck.
About 2:30am on May 7, 2000, a fire ripped through the headquarters
of Holbrook Inc., an Olympia timber company. Three weeks later, the
Earth Liberation Front issued a communique claiming credit for the crime
on behalf of a previously unknown group called “Revenge of the
Trees.” That same night, someone broke into the Dai-Zen Egg Farm
in Burlington and stole 228 chickens. The Animal Liberation Front issued
a communique saying the chickens had been placed in “loving homes.”
The Seattle grand jury is also investigating that raid.
At 8:30am on May 7, 2000, a Penske rental truck pulled into the AM/PM
Mini Market in Rochester, about 12 miles south of Olympia. According
to employees of the store, “the occupants of the truck dumped a
number of plastic bags containing clothes in a Dumpster behind the store,”
the complaint says. It had the same license plate as the one rented
by Allison Watson, the document asserts.
A Thurston County sheriff’s deputy subsequently called to the scene
found five bags containing “three sets of dark clothes, two black
ski masks, three pairs of gloves, a wrapper from a pair of bolt cutters
and a wrapper of wire ties.” The clothes were wet and covered with
grass. The FBI obtained footage from the AM/PM’s surveillance camera
and identified two people in the truck, Gina Lynn and Joshua Trentor.
“Both Lynn and Trentor have lengthy histories of involvement in
animal rights activism, including having participated in animal releases,
and, in Trentor’s case, being arrested in connection with ALF-claimed
vandalism. Thus I believe that the AM/PM Mini Market surveillance film
captures evidence of Lynn, Trentor, and the other male disposing of
evidence of crimes that they had committed earlier on May 6-7, 2000,”
Agent Gutierrez wrote. Last August, Watson was called before the grand
jury and refused to answer questions by invoking her Fifth Amendment
right against self-incrimination.
Paul Watson said her refusal was based on the conviction that grand
juries are repressive “Star Chamber” proceedings in which
people are stripped of their right to be represented by an attorney.
And he declared that Sea Shepherd is dedicated to enforcing international
legal protections for marine life and is not associated in any way with
the so-called liberation groups.
But last Oct. 23, Allison Watson was called again, given immunity from
prosecution and compelled to testify or face contempt of court charges
, according to the complaint.
Watson was asked to answer what must have seemed like innocuous questions.
After her arrest, Paul Watson sat holding the jewelry his wife was forced
to surrender before becoming a prisoner. He said they asked her questions
like, “Do you know this person or where were you on such a date.”
As she sat before the grand jury in October, one of those questions
was whether she knew Gina Lynn. Watson described Lynn as a friend with
whom she speaks regularly.
Then the federal prosecutor asked her whether the rental truck was always
in her possession. She said yes. The prosecutor followed up by asking
whether she had lent it to anyone. She said no. And Watson was asked
whether Lynn was ever in the truck. Again, Watson said no. All these
answers were lies, according to the complaint.
Outside the courthouse, about a half-dozen demonstrators passed out
a flier titled “Grand Juries, Modern Day Tools of Political Repression.”
The flier notes that “the grand jury system, long since abolished
in most democratic nations, denies an individual her most fundamental
of civil rights.” Paul Watson, a celebrated defender of marine
mammals and founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,
spoke proudly of how his wife had not long ago been released from a
Japanese jail where she was imprisoned for a short time for freeing
numerous dolphins from nets.
Watson said Sea Shepherd paid an $8,000 fine for his wife and one other
activist. “That came out to about $600 per dolphin. We thought
it was a good deal.” And Stu Sugarman, a Portland attorney representing
Allison Watson, called Agent Gutierrez’s complaint “extremely
one-sided. The truth will come out.”
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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