Four Greenpeace activists arrested at G8 summit

July 21, 2000
Web posted at: 10:54 PM HKT (1454 GMT)

OKINAWA, Japan (Reuters) -- Four activists protesting the logging policies of the world's most powerful nations were arrested on Friday for trespassing on the G8 summit venue, police said.

The activists were arrested as they landed on a beach and tried to take their message to the Group of Eight leaders, meeting on a remote peninsula on this southern Japanese island.

Three of those arrested had reached a beach at the meeting location and the other was in an inflatable boat in shallow water, Greenpeace officials said.

The four were an Israeli woman and three men, an American, a Japanese and a Russian.

Greenpeace demanded the four be released and said they would appeal to G8 delegations to urge Japan to free the four.

"It is totally unacceptable that people who fight for the last ancient forests were arrested," Greenpeace International forest campaigner Martin Kaiser told a news conference.

The four were part of an attempt to deliver a symbolic eight logs from Russian forests, as well as a letter, to G8 leaders to highlight Greenpeace's campaign against what it calls "illegal and destructive logging" in ancient forests.

Greenpeace says G8 policies effectively subsidize and encourage such logging.

"The four were arrested on suspicion of trespassing on an area that was restricted," a police official told Reuters.

Greenpeace said it sent its flagship Rainbow Warrior and log rafts toward the meeting venue despite a one nautical mile ban on boats, aimed at blocking just such protests.

A protester handcuffed to a log raft was removed by authorities and returned to the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace said.

The Rainbow Warrior will be back to waters off the venue on Saturday when the G8 leaders have a full plate of meetings, Kaiser said.

On Thursday, the environmental organization presented a new report from the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI), which said destruction of remaining pristine forests is subsidized by G8 governments to the tune of more than $3 billion.

The G8 comprises the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Britain, Canada and Russia.

At their 1998 summit, the G8 governments committed themselves to sweeping measures to protect forests.

G8 foreign ministers last week issued a report describing how the programme was being implemented and affirming the importance of promoting effective international cooperation on the issue. A final report will be published in 2002.

But Greenpeace says the G8 effort has been more rhetoric than reality.

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