Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 1 August 2024
Brown appeals to Queen Mary over Paul Watson’s arrest
Former Australian Greens Senator for Tasmania Bob Brown has appealed to Tasmanian-born Queen Mary of Denmark over the arrest of anti-whaling campaigner Captain Paul Watson in Greenland.
Watson was arrested when his ship docked in Danish-controlled Greenland’s Nuuk harbour last week. A Danish prosecutor and 12 police were ready for the Tokyo-Copenhagen sting operation. Watson has been detained until 15 August after a Japanese notice for his arrest was secretly issued through Interpol.
“Watson’s case will shame Copenhagen in the eyes of the world if it acts as the lickspittle of Tokyo whose cruel and bloody whaling in Antarctic waters ended in 2014 because it was found to be illegal by the International Court of Justice. In 2008, the Australian Federal Court ruled that the Japanese whaling was a criminal activity.”
“Watson’s Sea Shepherd organisation was the good green cop on the Antarctica beat in the absence of any government physically moving to uphold international law.”
Denmark is now complicit in aiding and abetting the criminals to imprison the law-keeper. It is treading where the United States and France refused to go.”
“I am well aware of the constitutional restraints on the monarchy in Denmark but there is enormous respect for Her Majesty Queen Mary here in her native Tasmania and, at the same time, huge support for Watson who was pivotal to getting the illegal Japanese whale-killers out of our oceans. The campaign to free Watson from his Danish-Japanese captors will be full-on, global and relentless,” Brown said.
