Greenpeace Thai activists seal off the GE papaya at the Khon Kaen agricultural research station of the Department of Agriculture.
Meet Pat and Jay. Do they look like criminals who should be
locked away for five years?
Jay has a Phd in Ecology from the University of Gorgia. Pat is a
journalist and yoga instructor.
Their story is about papaya.
Papaya is grown in almost every backyard and is a staple food in
some parts of Southeast Asia. It is a vital part of the Thai
kitchen and features in famous Thai dishes such as Som Tam, a spicy
papaya salad. Large numbers of people in Thailand grow the fruit,
and were worried when the Thai government began to experiment with
genetically engineered (GE) strains.
Hawaiian papaya disaster
Their worry was well founded.
Commercial plantings of GE papaya in Hawaii had been disastrous for
organic papaya growers. The selling price of GE papaya fell to
30-40 percent below production costs, and the price that farmers
got for their GE papaya in 2003 was 600 percent lower than the
price for organic papaya. Japan screens to ensure no GE papaya
enters the market, and it is illegal in many countries.
The government approved experimental plantings at a number of
research stations regardless.
Greenpeace discovers contamination
On 24 June 2004, we received test results showing that the fruit
of a papaya tree on a local farmer's land had been genetically
engineered.
Take
Action
Send a message to the Thai government: Free Pat and Jay. Find the real criminals.
The GE papaya tree was 12 months old and had been grown from papaya
seeds purchased from the government research station at Khon Kaen
in June 2003. Sale of GE seeds is illegal in Thailand.
In July of 2004, Pat and Jay took this story public when they
acted as spokespersons for Greenpeace activists who sealed off GE
papaya in experimental fields at the Khon Kaen research station --
the source of GE papaya contamination in the region. The activists,
dressed in protective suits, removed GE papaya fruit from trees and
secured them in hazardous material containers.
Pat and Jay call for destruction of test field
Pat and Jay appeared on television and in print demanding that
the government complete the process begun by the activists and
immediately destroy all papaya trees, fruit, seedlings, and seeds
in the research station to prevent further contamination. The
story became one of the biggest scandals in Thailand.
They were charged with theft, trespassing and destruction of
property.
No charges were made against the officials at the research
station, who threatened to rob papaya farmers of their livelihoods
by contaminating their crop, whose seeds trespassed into the fields
of farmers who didn't want them, and whose error led to the
contamination of papaya which then had to be destroyed.
Almost two months after Greenpeace took action against the
contamination, the government acknowledged that a plantation 4 kms
from the research station had been contaminated, and destroyed the
farmer's papaya.
Greenpeace was proven right.
The government collected samples from 2,345 plantations in 35
provinces.
They admitted that 24 plantations had been contaminated.
Government destroys test field
On September 15th, 2004, the government destroyed the GE papaya
in the research station's experimental field.
Thus, they fulfilled their civic duty by completing the job that
the Greenpeace team had begun.
Instead of getting to the bottom of who precisely was
responsible for the contamination, the very department that was
responsible for the contamination decided to take legal action
against Pat and Jay.
Shutting down opposition
These charges are not about the events of July 27th, 2004:
they're about preventing future events of this nature.
This story is about putting a chill on further protest against
GE crops in Thailand.
It's about making examples of a journalist and an ecology
professor who dared to speak up, and throw them in jail for it.
At stake is the entire nature of civil society in one of the
most developed countries of Southeast Asia.
Take Action!
Don't stand by and let Jay and Pat go to jail for doing the job
their government was supposed to do. Send a
message to the Prime Minister of Thailand demanding the
Thailand Papaya Activists go free, and the perpetrators of the
crime be prosecuted instead.
Free Thailand's papaya activists!
Send a message
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