Vessel braves barrage in bid to enter port

Press, 8 January 1983, Page 8

Vessel braves barrage in bid to enter port

NZPA Cherbourg French police officers fired tear-gas grenades at Greenpeace anti-nuclear protesters on their ship the Sirius before boarding the vessel soon after it unexpectedly entered Cherbourg yesterday. A spokesman for the international ecology organisation said that the "tear-gas grenades had sparked a fire when they hit the Sirius. The fire had been brought under control.

“Greenpeace came to demonstrate peacefully, and we are shocked by the action of authorities,” the spokesman said.

Agence France-Presse reports that the police had told

the ecologists that their ship would be towed to the naval arsenal, which is in a forbidden zone. The Sirius had been patrolling outside the port for several days. The riot police fired a stream of tear-gas grenades at the Sirius and at several supporting rubber dinghies when the ship anchored only a few metres from the quay.

The ecologists are protesting against the arrival of the freighter Pacific Crane with 24 tonnes of Japanese nuclear waste, scheduled to be reprocessed at the La Hague recycling plant near Cherbourg. The freighter left Japan on November 26, and the date of its arrival here has been

kept secret by the French authorities. Sirius crew members said that it was the first time one of their ships had been hit by tear-gas grenades, and denounced what they said was police violence against a pacifist organisation.

The Dutch master of the Sirius, Willem Beckman, had been later charged by the Cherbourg Port Administrator with violation of French maritime laws, maritime authorities said.

He faces up to six months imprisonment and a fine of up to $l6OO. The Greenpeace office in Paris said that the international crew of 13 ecologists was refusing to disembark.