Waiting for the first shards of light to break through the night sky, the two inflatable speedboats were running without navigation lights. The lead boat flashed a torch twice, and the two ribs powered up and began cutting through the swell of the English Channel.
Their target, a 20 000-ton cargo ship suspected of carrying illegally felled timber from the endangered rainforests of Indonesia, was lit up like a Christmas tree on the horizon. Six Greenpeace activists, dressed in orange survival suits with ”Forest Crime Unit” emblazoned on the back, would use caving hook ladders to climb the side of the ship, board and then occupy the vessel in an attempt to stop it from unloading its cargo at Tilbury docks on the Thames.
Greenpeace had been tracking the MV Greveno for months, since the campaign ship Rainbow Warrior watched it load a Europe-bound cargo of plywood from a sawmill known to have used timber from a supposedly protected orangutan refuge in Tanjung Puting national park. The ship is also carrying timber from an area where illegal logging is threatening the survival of the Sumatran tiger.
According to Greenpeace, behind much of the plywood that originates in Indonesia’s rainforests there is a web of criminal activity, corruption and bloodshed, and the arrival of the Greveno, which has already unloaded some of its cargo in France, is symptomatic of the way EU governments are not doing enough to stop the illicit trade.
Home to the longest list of endangered species in the world, Indonesia’s rainforest is disappearing faster than any other. An area the size of Belgium is destroyed every year and experts predict that by 2010 most of the lowland rainforest will be gone from Borneo and Sumatra.
Activists on board the Rainbow Warrior watched the Greveno loading plywood from the Ariabami Sari sawmill. Last year an Indonesian government investigation found that the owner of the sawmill, Korindo, was buying logs from timber dealers who have been felling trees in the orangutan refuge. The endangered ape is found only in Sumatra and Borneo and their numbers have halved in 10 years.
Despite the investigation, the mill was not shut down, and the company has refused to take part in a British trade initiative to assess the legality of Indonesian timber operations.
The ship is also known to be carrying timber supplied by a company that operates in Sumatra, buying timber in an area renowned for illegal logging which is threatening the survival of the island’s tiger.
Wednesday moning was just the latest skirmish between the cargo vessel and the Greenpeace campaigners. As the Greenpeace protest began, the two boats approached the MV Greveno, coming from the stern at high speed and drawing alongside the lowest point of the deck three metres above their heads. Using an unwieldy telescopic pole, the boarding party struggled to hook the tiny wire caving ladder on to the rail of the ship as their boat pitched and yawed in the Atlantic swell. The crew of the Greveno were ready for them.
The first boarding attempt had come on Tuesday morning when the same six activists had set out from the Greenpeace ship the Esporanza and approached the then unsuspecting Greveno. For a moment as they drew alongside they thought they had managed to attach the wire ladder, but the hook came loose and dropped into the sea. The boarding party struggled to reattach it, but had lost the element of surprise.
They were now in for their own unpleasant shock. Pictures taken by the Rainbow Warrior in Indonesia suggested the crew were mostly Filipinos, who in the past have usually reacted mildly when Greenpeace activists have attempted to board ships. But the smiling faces in the photographs bore no resemblance to the thick-set sailors of eastern European appearance who were now on deck. They were not compliant.
Alarm
The captain had sounded the alarm and by the time the boarding team tried to attach the ladder several crew were on hand to kick it away. The crew also had high-powered deck hoses.
Eventually the speedboats were forced to retreat. On Wednesday the pattern was repeated as the hook was kicked away and the hoses uncoiled. But the campaigners vowed to continue harassing the ship, and last night they were planning further action in the mouth of the Thames where the Greveno was due early today.
”We’re certainly not giving up,”’ said Greenpeace’s forest campaigner, Andy Tait. ”We’re going to do everything we can to disrupt the unloading of this ship.”
The UK Timber Trade Federation has admitted that not one of Indonesia’s sawmills can provide sufficient evidence of legality or sustainability for the British market, and three of the main high street builders merchants, including Jewson and Travis Perkins, have stopped buying Indonesian plywood because of concerns about illegal trade.
But while many European governments have spoken out about the illegal trade in timber there are few laws to stop it from being imported. Greenpeace is calling on the British and other EU governments to introduce legislation to make it a crime to import and market illegally logged timber and wood products. In the meantime the organisation has vowed to continue to harass ships it believes are carrying illegally felled timber. – Guardian Unlimited Â