Economic Terrorism Caribbean Being Victimized By NGOs Because Of Whaling Stance

By Tony best

“Economic terrorism”
Those strong words were used by Vaughn Charles, St. Lucia‚ Chief Fisheries Officer, to describe what he called “unfair and unwelcomed attacks‚” on the sovereignty of Eastern Caribbean nations by some whale conservation and environmental groups in and out of the United States and Europe.

Antigua Minister of Agriculture and Food, Joanne Massiah, agreed with the characterization.

“We in Antigua have been subjected to the same thing from NGOs” was the way she put it.

Charles, St. Lucia‚ Associate Commissioner to the International Whaling Commission, which is winding up its 60th annual conference in Santiago, the Chilean capital, said that Eastern Caribbean nations that belong to the IWC were being flooded with threats of tourism boycott from NGOs which oppose the sustainable use of whales and other marine mammals for food and accuse Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent of “selling‚” their votes to Japan in exchange for fisheries assistance.

“Our countries are still being bombarded by the NGOs with threats of tourism boycotts and so on” he said. “These threats, we think, are tantamount to economic terrorism. You cannot, you should not as an NGO attack a sovereign Government because of its policy. We see in this organization (IWC) that there are countries that tacitly condone these threats;”

Actually, a U.S. NGO launched a tourism boycott campaign more than a decade ago directed at the six Eastern Caribbean countries but it was called off when the IWC protested and other conservations conservation groups withdrew their support.

Charles complained about the threats to his country and its neighbors as a way of underscoring the need for vigilance among OECS (Organization of Eastern Caribbean) member-states of the IWC at a time when the debate on crucial and highly controversial issues was being marked by cordiality and compromise.

The Chief Fisheries Officer was concerned about a move to give the NGO a “voice” in IWC deliberations as part of a move to normalize the organization and reduce the tension between the anti-whaling group and those that support some form of commercial whaling of those species which scientists have confirmed were in abundance and their stocks not in danger of being depleted.“The Chairman of the IWC, William Hogarth, is embarking on an initiative to bring the Commission back on track so it can carry out the functions as mandated in the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling” Charles said. “We are seeing decisions made by consensus, lots of compromises at the meeting in Santiago. Yet our countries are facing a mountain of threats by the NGO, threats of boycotts directed at our tourism industry.”

Massiah, Antigua‚ IWC Commissioner voiced a similar concern.

Within the past few days while I was at the meeting, an NGO had used the internet to target me, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Tourism and the Prime Minister‚ office urging people, their members to email us, to bombard us, advising persons that our tourism industry, fragile as it is becoming in light of certain external economic conditions could be seriously undermined” she said. “What they are in effect doing waging a war against us because of the positions we take on the sustainable use of marine resources. That to my mind is economic terrorism, pure and simple.”

She was quick to say it was highly unlikely Antigua & Barbuda would be intimidated and forced to change its policy because of the threats.

“This is not new” she added. “It has been happening for years, certainly within the past four years since I became involved in the IWC. It was also happening before then too.

One has to be mindful that as a sovereign nation we have every right to adopt positions and advocate views that we determine to be in our best interest, developmentally, economically, and so on. I don’t believe that the threats, the bombardment, annoying as they are by persons unknown would cause us to change our position.”
The IWC conference ends on Friday.

 

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