GREENPEACE HOLDS INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ACTION AGAINST CANADIAN RAINFOREST DESTRUCTION AS ACTIVISTS START JAIL SENTENCE IN CANADA

6 April 1998

LONDON - Demonstrations will be held outside Canadian embassies across Europe today in protest at the destruction of Canada's last remaining areas of pristine temperate rainforest and as four activists spent their third night behind bars after being sentenced to three weeks jail on Friday for blockading a logging road.

Greenpeace activists in Austria, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Sweden today protested outside the Canadian embassies. Activists set a cage with a prisoner inside outside the embassy building in Berne, Switzerland while in Stockholm, Sweden, the protesters erected a banner outside the embassy saying : "You Can't Jail Truth". In the United Kingdom four activists began a 12 hour vigil at 8 a.m. outside the Canadian High Commission, each carrying the name of a jailed activist. A six foot bear carrying a Canadian flag with a tree-stump on it, was also erected outside the building. In Belgium, Spain and New Zealand protests were lodged with Canadian embassy staff. Greenpeace is calling on the Canadian government to place a moratorium on logging and road-building in the remaining pristine rainforest valleys of the Great Bear rainforest on Canada's Pacific coast.

Last week Western Forest Products (WFP) began building a road into one of the last remaining pristine valleys of the Great Bear Rainforest. A second company, Interfor, has began road building into another area of the same forest. Of the 353 original valleys on the west-coast of Canada, only 69 remain intact. The majority of these are slated to be clearcut logged in the next 10 years. These ancient rainforests support a huge diversity of life including one of the largest populations of grizzly bears in the world and the world's only population of rare white spirit bears. Globally 80 per cent of ancient forests have been destroyed and the biggest threat to what remains is industrial logging.

In Germany activists today continued to block the main gate to the Clariant plant in Frankfurt, which they began on March 26. Clariant, which is 45 per owned by chemical multinational Hoechst, is one of the largest European buyers of pulp from Western Forest Products. The company uses pulp to make cellulose ether, used in the production of fabrics, paints, construction materials and glues. On Friday activists occupied the roof of the Canadian embassy in Bonn for ten hours before being removed by police.

Meanwhile four activists spent their third night in jail after being sentenced on Friday to three weeks in prison for blockading a logging road into Canada's Great Bear Rainforest last year. The defendants were locked to various pieces of equipment during the blockade. The four activists are; Shayla Healy, 24, (Canada); Wim Van De Vyver, 31, (Belgium); Marleen Van Poeck, 27, (Belgium) and Patricia Fromm, 33, (Germany). Judge Pamela Kirkpatrick sentenced the remaining 14 defendants to a 21-day-in-jail suspended sentence in addition to 2 years probation for their participation.

A number of companies in Europe and North America have or will cancel contracts for pulp and timber with Canadian logging companies Western Forest Products and Interfor. They include: US - Xerox, Kinkos, 3M, Bristol-Meyers-Squibb; UK - B&Q, Do-It-All, BBC magazines, Sainbury's/HomeBase, Magnet; Austria - Lenzing AG.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
- Matilda Bradshaw in Greenpeace UK on 00-44-171-865 8255/6/7/8
or Jon Walter Greenpeace International 00-31-20-524 9547.
- Video of the new road being built by Western Forest Products through the Great Bear Rainforest are available on request.