Message-ID: <01HPPJA4K7HEA4L8XR@umiami.ir.miami.edu> Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 07:30:10 -0400 From: "STEVEN GREEN, DEPT.BIOLOGY, Subject: Reprint of Article on Romero & Dolfins To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L
Permission has been received to reprint the article below. You may distribute it freely.------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Sherry Landsman <mailto:landsmns@igc.apc.org>, 17 April 1995 Subject: Article appearing in latest Earth Times
Title: Profile of a Venezuelan whistle-blower
By Sherry Landsman Earth Times News Service
Aldemaro Romero is a messenger bearing bad news. He's a Venezuelan marine biologist who documented on videotape the killing of dolphins off the Venezuelan coast. Now the Venezuelan government is hunting Romero. The US State Department has officially received a request from the Supreme Court of Venezuela for extradition of Romero.
While conducting a biodiversity study of Venezuela in 1989, Aldemaro Romero and Venezuelan environmentalist Professor Ignacio Agudo found that dolphins were being hunted by Venezuelan fishermen and sold for shark bait. Early in 1993 they presented documentation, including videos, photographs, and dolphin carcasses to the office of Venezuela's Attorney General. Their report asked for protection of the dolphins and economic help for the fishermen. Venezuelan scientific and environmental groups collected over 45,000 signatures on a petition delivered to the National Congress requesting a Marine Mammal Protection Act. There was no response from the Venezuelan government.
During the 1993 fall semester Romero was working as an adjunct research professor at the University of Miami. He lectured and showed his videotape to a Conservation Biology class which was attended by Russ Rector, leader of the Dolphin Freedom Foundation. Rector asked for a copy of the tape and subsequently released it to the media. The videotape documenting the intentional dolphin killing was aired on CNN in November, 1993, leading to over 20,000 letters of protest sent to the Venezuelan Embassy and Consulates in the US. Dolphin activists picketed the Miami consulate, calling for a boycott of Venezuelan products. (Although its yellow fin tuna has been banned in the US since 1991, Venezuela is the largest exporter of gasoline to the United States and the second largest supplier of oil.) That got a response.
A second videotape materialized at a Venezuelan government press conference in Miami that was called to denounce Romero. This one depicted the biologists as creative directors staging the dolphin kill for dramatic effect. Steven Green, University of Miami Biology Professor, has seen both tapes. He says the government version has undergone sophisticated alteration including mislabeled voices and out-of-sequence edits.
Romero reports, "The outcry by the American public provoked a counterattack by the Venezuelan authorities against us personally that has included doctoring our original tape, launching a massive media war, unleashing death threats, and filing criminal charges."
Romero can't say for sure what he's being charged with. He says he's been denied his rights to have legal representation: "I don't have a lawyer representing me because the Venezuelan Consulate in Miami denied me my right to have my power of attorney legalized. However, according to the Venezuelan press the charge is 'killing of a dolphin and conspiracy to do so.'" Romero points out that the fishermen who are seen in the video harpooning the dolphin and sailing the boat, are free. "The big question", asks Green, "is where is the money coming from to carry out this well-funded campaign of political persecution?"
Romero and his family left Venezuela in February 1994 after receiving telephoned death threats. He said, "They described my wife, young daughters, and my daughters' school schedules in some detail." In a telephone interview last week, Romero spoke of continuing to feel threatened and in fear of kidnapping. He said that a Caracas journalist referred by the Consular office who wanted a one-on-one interview with him had failed a credentials check. Agudo, who is facing the same charges, remains in hiding in Venezuela.
Romero, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Miami in 1984, has published over 300 articles, including 17 papers and the only 4 books on Venezuelan marine mammal ever published. But they are no longer available in Venezuela. According to his former employees at Bioma, a Venezuelan conservation foundation, his books have been destroyed. This followed a report last April in Venezuelan national newspaper, "El Diario de Caracas," that the Director of Fauna of the Ministry of the Environment had denounced the books for "research based on false data with no scientific grounds."
In the past year, Venezuela's financial system collapsed as more than a dozen banks failed, requiring a $7 billion bailout. Tuna exports are an important source of foreign exchange but there is an embargo in the US against Venezuela and other countries that catch tuna with purse-seine nets that kill dolphins. According to documents from the US State Department, Venezuela has been charged over $2 million by the Washington law firm Arnold & Porter to lobby for lifting the ban. Romero points out that the Venezuelan government is extremely touchy about any publicity that reveals its insensitivity towards slaughter of dolphins, "Its reaction to my revelations is clearly in line with the ancient practice of killing the bearer of bad news."
----------------------- End of article --------------------------------