Seal culling incident - police capriciousness or... what?

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Written on: 17. 07. 2009 [17:36]
gjensen Gerard Jensen Topic creator registered since: 02.01.2009 Posts: 39	Any tourist taking pictures or filming his visit in Namibia (including subsequent publishing of either of them, be that on flickr or youtube) surely gazes more than just slightly astonished when he reads about the "reasons" given regarding the arrest of two journalists (one British, one South African) when they "dared" to take pictures of the seal culling operations at Cape Cross. Citing the "Namibbia Film Comission" as having not been approached surely is pretty much rediculous - especially if you come accross the reason behind the establishment of that comission: "The Namibia Film Commission (NFC) is a statutory body that was established by Act 6 of Parliament in 2000 to support, encourage and promote film productions as well as the development of the film industry in Namibia." Nice encouragement. Perfect promotion. Fact is, dear Mrs. Wilma Deetlefs, that the required permit does not stem from the NFC but from the Ministry of Environment and Tourism - the NFC does not have to be comissioned, it just acts as a "facilitator" anyway. If the arrest was based on that allegation alone, then obviously you're heading for legal trouble: the reason given in your public statement is obviously bogus. I'd say you better correct that - or probably face legal actions yourself. Animal rights groups are known to be extremely stubborn when it comes to defending their work... Fact is, your act of caprice has once again landed Namibia in rather bad press: You've managed to land the country on Bloomberg, got yourself highlighted on a Canadian Anti-Sealing blog, made it into Yahoo! Headline News all by yourself, got your 15 minutes of fame on France 24 and God knows where else - talk about unnecessarily turning up the heat on this explosive issue with careless remarks in public: the international press and conservancy institutions descending on this kind of story surely gives you an idea how it must feel if the hunters suddenly become the hunted, hey? And what for exactly? Just take this youtube video to notice that obviously nobody was there last year, complaining about the exact same thing happening. Same applies to 2007, as this video proves. And as this clip proves, nobody cared about filming there in 2006 either. Great advertisment for Namibia: "BOYCOTT NAMIBIA - watch Namibia's seal cull" - mind you: not *my* headline... Truly great, how your "Ministry of Information" (looking at your public statement, one may feel tempted to add the syllable "Mis" here though) tries to do the work of the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, I must say. Any other bad ideas you had lately? Thought so. But let's challenge our newspaper "The Namibian" a bit: who is Hatem Yavuz? Why do I mention the name of an Australian businessman of Turkish origin here? Perhaps Namibian journalists are a bit smarter than certain members of Namibian Ministries...
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Written on: 17. 08. 2009 [15:26]
Gecko Hendrik registered since: 12.02.2009 Posts: 33	Well I thought very dependable in terms, they actually made arrests!!! Capricious that they arrested the right people for a sensitive reason. I wonder if a journalist would be arrested if they had filmed the Springbok harvests of the last four years? or if someone filmed the elephant culling of a couple years ago? I believe that such culls are necessary for the survival of the greater colony, though it is a man made problem that gave raise to these culling. Overfishing on our shore and the fur industry like that of Hatem Yavuz Deri are to be blamed, but even then if the seal populations are not left incheck we will have a far larger crises on our hands such as starving seal cubs littering our coast line, unfortunately their natural predators are being snagged in off shore fishing nets. And one in twelve aardwolf is being shot by uneducated farmers. (I know… sounds dumb aardwolf feeds on termites, but it is a little known fact that aardwolf migrates to the coastline each year to kill seal cubs, they would crush the skulls one after the other for no known reason and in one “sitting” kill 20 plus seal cubs). Just had to say something this post was on long and no one responded yet. [This article was edited 1 times, at last 17.08.2009 at 15:40.]
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