Appalling sensationalism and distortions from the corporate media world
From THE SUNDAY HERALD SUN
Enviro-commandos By NICK PAPPS
20jan02
A SECRET group of militant, professional greenies is being used as "hired guns" to lead protests across the country. Sunday Herald Sun investigations revealed the commando-style organisation, known as Future Rescue, has been contracted to lead several recent protests, including last year's anti-logging campaign in the Otway Ranges, an anti-nuclear protest at Jabiluka in Kakadu and the anti-logging sit-in near Marysville in Victoria's central highlands.
The group, formed four years ago in Victoria, consists of about 15 core members, who are skilled in avoiding police anti-protest actions. Their identities are secret and they are brought into protests when organisers need their muscle and skill. The group is training new members in Tasmania and other states. Its actions are funded by green organisations, grants and some outdoor equipment companies.
The group constructed the fortified camp about 25km outside Marysville, which houses up to 90 protesters and has blocked a logging road between Cathedral Range State Park and the Yarra Ranges. At the camp, Future Rescue has built a complex network of steel plates, ropes and cables to stop police from removing protesters. In one elaborate trap, anyone moving a steel pipe at the camp entrance would send a protester plummeting 30 metres, possibly to death, from a platform in a mountain grey gum tree. The camp was built for the Wilderness Society and several Marysville residents to protest against logging in the area.
Wilderness Society spokesman Gavan McFadzean said yesterday the society had "contracted" parts of the Marysville protest to Future Rescue. "They've got a low profile," Mr McFadzean said. "We sub-contract to them for direct action. This kind of direct action has given us the ability to have a high level of influence over logging actions." Mr McFadzean said Future Rescue members also had trained several protesters in the Marysville campaign in tree climbing and other skills. Other anti-police methods at Marysville include chaining protesters to land-clearing equipment with glass-reinforced tubing and tubes containing ball bearings. These new techniques are used to stop police using angle grinders to cut the tubes.
Protesters at the central highlands action also have been given a "forest activists' handbook", written by sympathetic lawyers, to help them resist police and deal with confrontation. The high-profile protest has sparked claims from greenies that they have been assaulted by loggers and locals, who say "the ferals" are driving tourists from Marysville. The town has a population of about 500 and has been at the centre of a stand-off between loggers and green groups for a week. The dispute has split the town, with up to 30 locals supporting the greenies through a protest group known as Actively Conserving Marysville's Environs.
Group spokesman and Marysville resident Dave Marsden said his pro-green stance had led to a logger attacking him last week in the town's main street. He said the man had tried to pick him up by the throat and had abused him. "We are having to take precautions -- there's a sense of threat," he said. "We are having to lock our doors and that's something we never needed to do around here before." But other locals, such as Kay Ronalds, 38, who has lived in Marysville all her life, claimed the local protesters were outsiders who had moved into the area in the past three years. "They never talk to us," she said. "They just see the trees being felled and the bare patches. "Anyone who has been here all his or her life sees the bare patches grow back." Ten-year logger Simon Morley said all he wanted was the greenies out of the town. "They want to shut down all the logging; it's our jobs on the line," he said. Greenies are seeking a ban on logging in the area, with the land being turned into national park and tourism replacing logging.