Boycott Mitsubishi campaign launched

Boycott Mitsubishi campaign launched

The Rainforest Information Centre and the Environmental Youth Alliance launched the Australian Boycott Mitsubishi campaign on September 24. The "Mitsubishi Challenge" National Basketball League will be picketed throughout Australia for the remainder of the season.

Brent Hoare said that banners, stickers, street theatre and leaflets will inform the public about Mitsubishi's role in global deforestation. "We want everyone to enjoy the basketball, but we hope that when people find out what damage Mitsubishi is doing to the rainforests, they will join in putting pressure on it to stop."

The San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network (RAN), along environmental organisations in the US, Japan, Europe, Australia and in the countries where the threatened rainforests are located, has launched a campaign to bring consumer pressure to bear on all Mitsubishi products, including cars, trucks, televisions and VCRs.

"When combined with its 68%-owned Meiwa Trading Company, the Mitsubishi Corporation is the second largest importer of tropical timber into Japan. We believe that when Mitsubishi's destruction of temperate and boreal forests are accounted for, Mitsubishi is possibly the world's number one corporate destroyer of rainforests", said Hoare.

"There's a war going on between huge transnational corporations and native peoples around the world", RAN campaign coordinator Michael Marx said. "Commercial activities such as logging, export agriculture, cattle ranching, mining and oil exploration have reduced the world's rainforests by half this century."

"We are sure most people want to save the rainforests from extinction. By making the public aware of the devastating impact of Mitsubishi's activities, we hope to convince Mitsubishi of this, and inspire them to stop destroying the rainforests", Hoare concluded.

From GLW issue 117