Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson has dedicated his life to sailing into danger to protect marine life. At 73, his decades of activism have brought him into conflict with numerous countries, multiple arrests, and even Interpol red notices – the latest issued by Japan, a nation with a long history of whaling. Watson has made it his mission to expose illegal whaling operations, even when such activities are disguised as scientific research. Watson has just been released after five months of detention in Greenland.
Produced by Charles Wente, Gavin Lee, Antonia Cimini and Guillaume Gougeon.
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Produced by Charles Wente, Gavin Lee, Antonia Cimini and Guillaume Gougeon.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Paul Watson has spent a lifetime sailing into danger to protect life
00:03in the ocean and defending whales at sea. In 1974, it's a life of activism
00:07that's led to run-ins with a number of countries, multiple detentions,
00:11Interpol read notices, the latest being from Japan, which has long
00:14hunted whales, and Paul's quest has been to expose illegal whaling
00:18activities, including when it's dressed up for research purposes. He
00:22was in detention for almost five months in Greenland by Danish police
00:27at the behest of Japan, which wanted him extradited, still does, but
00:31accused Paul of a crime from 14 years ago that revolves around his team
00:35firing raw butter stink bombs at the crew of one of their whaling
00:39research ship. Well, after that, he was released earlier this week
00:43without extradition, going ahead, and he's returned to his family here
00:47in France. He's here with us tonight. Paul, great to have you with us,
00:51great to talk to you. We're going to talk about a lot of the detail,
00:55what's happened, the incident, what Japan are alleging. First of all,
00:59how are you? Because you've been back just a few days.
01:02Very relieved to be back with my family just before Christmas.
01:05Talk us through your time in detention, first of all, because five
01:10months in Greenland, I did hear, you gave one interview by phone to,
01:14I think, BBC World Service, where you talked about, you had some, it
01:17was kind of a bizarre situation, I think you described it as, you had
01:20some access to go and do some shopping in the day, and you had a
01:23beautiful view from your cell to see the Arctic foxes. And tell me
01:26about your, actually, what it was like inside.
01:29Well, from the outside, the prison looks like it's in the Gulag. But
01:32once you're in the prison, I got this beautiful view of the fjord and
01:35the mountains, I could see whales out there. You're not allowed to go
01:38shopping, but they don't serve meals in this prison, they give you
01:42about 150 euros a week, and you go to the prison store, buy your own
01:46food, and then prepare your own meals.
01:48I see. So you could, I've seen you outside talking to reporters, you
01:51were able to go and leave the detention facility briefly, or is
01:53this within the grounds that we're seeing here, that photo behind you?
01:56Oh, no, this was after I was released.
01:59Oh, I see. Okay, so you had to stay within the detention, but you
02:02could communicate by phone, you could still send messages, because I
02:06know your messages were coming through, we were getting, receiving
02:09some of your updates while you were still inside.
02:11I was, but I was only allowed 10 minute phone call to my family every
02:14week. But media people could make interview appointments and schedule
02:19that. And so I did meet with numerous media people during that time.
02:23Were you treated well?
02:24Oh, yeah, I have no complaints about it. The prisoners are friendly,
02:26the prison guards are friendly, the police were friendly, they're all
02:29it's all very friendly place in Greenland.
02:32I want to go back to your story, because this incident relates to 14
02:37years ago, as I just said, and we're talking about, well, you'd set up
02:40whale wars, this essentially a real life reality TV programme on the
02:44high seas of what your team back then, Sea Shepherd, were actually
02:48dealing with at the time, the antics you would try and do to stop
02:52whales being harpooned, being killed. Let's talk about the incident,
02:56because we have it on film. This is the moment of stink bombs being
03:00fired, the centre of Japan's arguments for one of your team in
03:04Ekateran. And let's have a look at what ensued.
03:08When Chuck gave me the order to slow down the Nishinmari, we had
03:12failed on the Shoninmari. The Nishinmari's got four times the
03:16power. I just thought it was wasted exercise.
03:35But in saying that, we did manage to slow them down a little bit. And
03:38it was a lot of fun.
03:40That's a definite hit.
03:43Sweet. Smell of napalm in the morning.
03:48For eight hours, Pete and his crew engaged the Nishinmari, but could
03:52do little to make any lasting impact on the 8,000 tonne factory
03:56ship. So that's from the programme, whale war. So this is what Japan
04:00were using. They've said in a statement this week, they regret
04:03your release. They accuse you of causing damage to that ship from
04:06that material we saw. But you say this is political. This is to
04:09stop you being a nuisance to them.
04:12Well, the real problem for them was that we had a TV show that
04:14reached millions of people. It was exposing their illegal whaling
04:17operations in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. So we embarrassed
04:21Japan. That's what this is all about. That boat that you saw
04:23there, the black one, it was deliberately rammed and cut in
04:26half and destroyed. That was a $2 million ship destroyed. The six
04:30crew members were thrown into the ocean. One of the cameramen
04:32suffered a broken ribs. They fired guns at us. They fired flash
04:37bang grenades at us. And they had no, there's no consequences
04:41legally for them.
04:43And this was a research ship that was essentially there for
04:46surveillance to watch you, wasn't it?
04:48Well, that particular ship is a factory ship and they call it,
04:51they have research on the side. But it was really just a guise
04:54for commercial whaling. And I'm not the judge of that. They were
04:58taken to court in 2014 by the International Court of Justice in
05:01The Hague that ruled that it was illegal, but they continued to do
05:04that, ignored the court.
05:05So under the auspices, under the ostensibly to research, as you
05:09say, the ICJ back in 2014 said this is not justified to be
05:13killing hundreds of whales under the banner of research. You
05:16mentioned what then happened because this kind of gets to the
05:19thread, doesn't it, of the whole arc of the story here. We saw the
05:22moment of the actual incident. But what we'll see now is what
05:26you've just described, the Japanese whaling ship hitting
05:29your catamaran.
05:31And it wasn't until the very last second that they did the
05:44sudden turn to start. And it was kind of like they came off two
05:49waves. The first wave they turned maybe 20, 30 degrees. And
05:56then I'm thinking this is going to be close. And then there was
06:01the second wave and they just put them straight onto us. I
06:12never had time to get terrified. It was the collision was been
06:16and gone before I had a chance to think about it. Just
06:20everyone's instincts kicked in. Interestingly, we all had the
06:23same idea jumped down in that cockpit area and you saw it was
06:26just a mess of bodies. And everyone clinging on to each
06:33other.
06:35So to follow this thread, what we're then seeing is, well, your
06:40colleagues that we've saw that Pete Boutain ends up in prison
06:43or ultimately in Japan for a while. And you have suddenly
06:47fairly short while after that, an Interpol red notice. So talk
06:50us through the sequence after that.
06:52What happened after his vessel was destroyed, he wanted to then
06:56confront the captain who destroyed his ship. I actually
06:59advised him not to do this. But he said, look, I've got to do
07:02this as a citizen's arrest. Yes. And he had every right to do it.
07:06So what he did was he boarded the Shonan Maru number two, and
07:10he's calmly walked up to the wheelhouse door, knocked on the
07:13door and they opened it and he gave me says this is a letter of
07:15complaint for what you did. And then they immediately grabbed
07:18him, hauled him all the way back to Japan on the ship, charged
07:21him with trespassing, assault and obstruction of business.
07:27That was the other one. And then while he was in under arrest,
07:31and they held him for two months in Japan, he made a deal with
07:35the prosecutor that if he blamed me and said, if I ordered him to
07:39do that, they would give him a suspended sentence. And he did
07:42that. And after he was released, he said, well, I lied to the
07:44prosecutor. And he said, Paul Watson did not order me to do
07:48this. But Japan had everything they needed to come after me.
07:51And the charge was conspiracy to obstruct business, conspiracy
07:55to trespass.
07:57So it takes us then two years later, I think we're about 2012,
08:00you have this first Interpol Red Notice. So the idea is that
08:04they request an arrest and that is up to the each country decide
08:07on how to determine that. Now you at that point, at some point
08:11you were living, staying sometime in, I think, in Ireland,
08:14in the UK, in France as well. And none of those countries decided
08:17to cooperate with that. It happened, as we said, later on in
08:21Greenland, it's probably worth you talking us through then what
08:23was happening with Japan, because after the ruling you mentioned,
08:26the ICJ, their research ship goes back to port in Japan. But
08:31you're still watching them under the Paul Watson organisation.
08:34And they come up with a, what is it something like multi billion
08:38dollar new ships heading back to the Antarctic, which eventually
08:42takes us back to what you were trying to do, I think I might say
08:46Fire Island to Greenland to essentially refuel on the way to
08:50the Antarctic, when you got arrested.
08:52Well, we were on our way to the North Pacific by way of the
08:54Northwest Passage, but we had to refuel in Greenland. And what
08:58had Japan did was they gave a red notice specifically to
09:01Denmark, because anywhere else they got it didn't come up. But
09:05Denmark has a vested interest because they have the killing of
09:08pilot whales and dolphins in the Faroe Islands, which we've been
09:10opposing. So I found myself being arrested in Greenland. And
09:15you know, I was quite confident we had everything on film, it
09:18was all documented. All we had to do is look at the evidence to
09:21see that the charges weren't valid. It took them two and a
09:24half months to even look at the evidence, they just refused to
09:27do it. So every month, I would come back into court, and they
09:29said, Oh, remand them for another 28 days, another 28
09:32days, another 28 days. Finally, on my birthday, on December
09:362, they said that the Attorney General of Denmark would make a
09:40decision within two weeks. And that decision came and the
09:43decision was to release me not extradite me.
09:46So all the while you had more than 100,000 people sign a
09:49signature for your release, you had celebrities, many
09:52celebrities, fighting for your cause as well, Martin Sheen, the
09:56artist Moby, a number of Brigitte Bardot. Also, you'd
10:00written to President Macron as well, who'd shown support with
10:03rhetoric. Tell me about whether that factored in and what you
10:06who and what factored in do you think to your ultimate release?
10:09Well, I think that I mean, with the support from President
10:11Macron, the support from President Lula of Brazil, the
10:15president of French Polynesia, all of this factored into into
10:18this. We had an excellent legal team that Lamy Assam Lamy of Sea
10:21Shepherd France put together. And yeah, celebrities around the
10:25world, Jane Goodall, there's James Cameron, Sylvia Earle,
10:28even the Pope sent a message. So I think that the support was
10:33overwhelming. I received about 4,500 letters while I was in
10:36prison, and about 70% were from from France. I tried to write as
10:41many as possible or answer as many as possible, especially
10:43from children all around the world. I had a few letters
10:45saying they wondered why Santa Claus was in prison.
10:49What did the can I ask what do you remember what the Pope said?
10:52No, I just think that he was he made his views known to the
10:55Danish government.
10:57So at this point, you you're you're coming out, but it's
11:01worth saying to the audience, I just want to explain that this
11:03is something that you've you've dealt with in a in a career,
11:06basically a lifetime's work of a number of authorities. Costa
11:10Rica, I think we can mention and amongst, you've been detained
11:13elsewhere, you've had issues with the Icelandic government.
11:15But I want to take you back to the mid 70s. This is when
11:19basically want to see Paul right at the start of his career TV
11:22career as well working, I think one of the key influences
11:24starting Greenpeace. And this is what happened when basically
11:28you almost killed by a harpoon that came from a Soviet ship
11:32that was striking a whale. Let's take a look.
11:36The guy must have been a good shot is all I can figure out or
11:39else. We were awfully lucky, whatever he he kind of waited
11:41till we went down on a swell and the whales came up. And then
11:45he fired over our head. So it must have been about six or
11:50seven feet.
12:00To this point, we've been dealing with live whales and
12:02everyone was in love with whales. And here's this
12:04slaughtered teenage whale lying in the water and everybody just
12:07got the emotions just got pretty crazy at that stage.
12:12What do you say, Paul? How long do you think it is?
12:16How long?
12:17About 18 feet.
12:22So Watson jumped on it. And as a matter of fact, he closed the
12:26whale's eye was open. So he just pushed the lid and closed
12:29closed its eye.
12:30When you say on board, you mean you jumped on the top of a
12:33whale? What was that like?
12:34Well, it was, it was sad. I mean, there was a harpoon lower
12:40in the back and the blood was coming through. So the blood was
12:42coming on my hands.
12:44When you look back at that, Paul, and you talk about the
12:47moment, a number of people actually anti whaling community
12:49talk about when they see the significance, that sentient
12:52moment of seeing the eyes, even in Moby Dick, of course, that
12:55significance of the beauty, the power of the whale, the sadness,
12:59the connection. When you look back at that and think, what have
13:02you achieved, you know, in your mission to try to stop it
13:05happening? Is it better now? Or is the situation worse?
13:08Since 1975, when that took place, I think about 90% of the
13:12world's whaling has been shut down. Over that time, we stopped
13:16Australia, Spain, South Korea, South Africa, all of these
13:20nations no longer whale. And as of 2019, for the first time in
13:24200 years, there was no whaling in pelagic waters. So it's been
13:27a very successful campaign. We've saved literally 10s of
13:301000s of whales during that time. Now we have to stop
13:34Iceland from resuming whaling. We have to stop Norway and Japan.
13:39Japan in particular, how do you feel about that? Do you feel
13:42that that you you would like to see some accountability that
13:44it's come to nothing that you've spent five months in detention
13:48for something that you clearly see appears to be from the fact
13:52that it's been dropped in a political way of getting you out
13:55of the way?
13:55Well, they did drop whaling in the Southern Ocean. In 2019,
14:00they just want to go back on them, we now have to try and
14:02stop them from going back. So I'm hoping that, you know, over
14:07the next few years, we'll be able to shut them down
14:08completely. And the way to do this, I mean, I've always said
14:11that the most powerful weapon in the world is a camera, exposing
14:15them constantly exposing them. In fact, when they arrested me
14:17in Greenland, it actually backfired on them, because our
14:21intention was to focus international attention on their
14:23illegal whaling operations. By arresting me, they did just that
14:26much more powerfully than if they hadn't done that. So they
14:31actually did us a great favour.
14:32A couple of thoughts. One is that I've heard you refer to a
14:36number of times as an inverted Captain Ahab, that you're not
14:39hunting the whale, your hunt is for those hunting the whale,
14:42with a ferocity, to an extent where we've seen language in the
14:45past coming from the likes of Greenpeace, which you split from
14:48a couple of years after we just saw that image, that don't like
14:52your direct action, that didn't comment and in the past use
14:55similar language to the Japanese government, I think the term
14:57eco terrorist was used. Tell me how you how you feel about that.
15:02And did you find any support from Greenpeace while in
15:05detention?
15:06I think Greenpeace made a statement. Yes. But the thing is,
15:10you know, I don't mind being called an eco terrorist, because
15:12it's not true. I've never caused an injury to anybody. I have no
15:15criminal record. I've never been convicted of a crime. And when
15:18people say, Are you an eco terrorist? I always say, No, I
15:20don't. I've never worked for Monsanto. So no, I'm not. Our
15:24philosophy has always been one of what I call aggressive
15:27nonviolence, where that's aggressively intervene, but
15:30we're not going to hurt anybody and we never have. But we also
15:33don't protest, we intervene against illegal activities,
15:36illegal whaling. So there's a big difference between, you
15:40know, Greenpeace's approach is completely different. But you
15:43know, I've always been accused of being too controversial and
15:45too confrontational, but I think that that's necessary. The
15:49strength of any movement is in diversity. Therefore, the
15:51strength of this movement has to be in diversity. There's me on
15:54one end, and then there's people who are just writing letters
15:56and but it all points to the same end. It doesn't matter
15:59whether your approach is education, litigation,
16:00legislation, or direct intervention, it all works
16:03towards the same cause.
16:05Do you think now, you're being left alone by the Japanese
16:08government, there's no sense that you've got to be tracked
16:10continually, is there? And also, I guess the bigger question is,
16:14what now for you is this, you know, Paul Watson now say, Okay,
16:18time to hang up my boots at 74. Or are you still ready to go out
16:22and drop anchor again?
16:23I've never envisioned retirement. And Japan is even
16:26more determined now because they're even more embarrassed
16:29now. One of the things we're going to do in the new year is
16:31to go to Lyon and confront Interpol directly. And not just
16:35for my sake, but also the fact that Interpol is being used as a
16:38political tool by many countries to stop people they disagree
16:42with, not for any crimes. And my case has been cited by a
16:46European committee, parliamentary committee
16:49investigating Interpol as a sample of abuse of Interpol's
16:52power.
16:53Very interesting, because we heard from a source who has
16:58close contacts with senior officials at Interpol, and their
17:01view of what was going on with the Danish government was that
17:05they didn't have to, as the Danish government had said,
17:07follow the principle of the arrest warrant, it was for them
17:10to decide they had a degree of flexibility to which I mentioned
17:14Ireland, UK, France decided not to do. And is that an area that
17:18you're looking at that when people see it's an international
17:20red notice, it's easy to think that's an automatic arrest
17:23warrant.
17:24They do. I think Denmark was certainly aware that they didn't
17:27have to do this. But they also have a mutual interest with
17:30Japan. And that is the protection of the pilot whale
17:34and dolphin kills in the Faroe Islands, which by the way, is
17:37illegal. It's a violation of the Berne Convention, you cannot
17:39kill cetaceans under European Union laws. Now the Faroese will
17:44say, well, we're exempt because we're a territory of Denmark.
17:49But the thing is, is that 85% of those Faroese hold Danish
17:52passports, they shouldn't be allowed to enjoy the benefits of
17:55EU membership if they're not going to abide by EU regulations
17:58and laws.
17:59Very briefly, because we have about 30 seconds, but I would
18:02like to know when you look at the situation now, and you have
18:06this, you've had this time to reflect on what's happened to
18:09you. Are you trying to, you don't bear a personal grudge
18:14with Japan? Are you looking at them in particularly with the
18:17whaling at the moment? Or is it more general than that?
18:19Well, I have a lot of support in Japan, but we're against the
18:21Japanese whaling industry, which is a criminal enterprise. That's
18:25what we're opposed to. And we have a lot of Japanese people
18:27who agree with us on that.
18:29Paul, pleasure to talk to you. And great to see you out of
18:33detention as well. Paul Watson, anti whaling campaigner here on
18:36France 24 and a happy Christmas to you as well.