The combined reports below were published today by news agency New Zealand Press Association and newspapers NZ Herald and The National Business Review.
AUCKLAND - Police are likely to lay charges against 20 Greenpeace protesters after Fonterra Cooperative Group Ltd's employees were forced to evacuate their headquarters in New Zealand over a bomb scare, this morning.
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| Greenpeace's McDiarmid receives a trespass notice |
Inspector Lou Alofa of the police northern communications centre said Fonterra's building on Princes St was evacuated after a suspicious package was left unattended and chained to an elevator handrail inside the building.
"We have dealt with the package and can confirm it was not an improvised explosive device," Mr Alofa said. "We discovered it was actually two speakers playing a voice recording and the sound of chainsaws."
Greenpeace New Zealand executive director Bunny McDiarmid said, "We take protests seriously and all our volunteer activists are highly-trained, calm and respectful of police and emergency services. The right to peaceful protest is the foundation of a democratic society."
Another Greenpeace activist, Simon Boxer, insisted the protest had only barricaded one entrance and staff were able to pass through five other entrances to the building unhindered. "Our members peacefully handed out leaflets explaining what we were doing," he said, adding the television screens were broadcasting footage from a Greenpeace trip last week to Indonesia, looking at the deforestation of native forests.
Greenpeace claims that Fonterra, the world’s largest dairy exporter, imports one quarter of the world's palm kernel. As a result, rainforest in Indonesia is being cleared at a rate of 2 per cent per year in order for the oil palm trees to be grown. "We hope the message has gone in there and that Fonterra will take corporate responsibility for the deforestation that is happening in Indonesia at this very minute."
This protest comes four months after Greenpeace protestors chained themselves together to block the fuel depot at Fonterra’s Clandeboye factory in Canterbury which uses coal.
By 9.30am, Fonterra's staff had returned to the 9-storey building.
Greenpeace called on Fonterra and the Government to end New Zealand's importation of palm kernel grown on areas of destroyed rainforest which it said was driving climate change and putting at risk of extinction several wildlife species, including primates called orangutan.
"As the palm industry opens up new frontiers across Indonesia, companies like Fonterra, which is expected to spend NZ$230 million this year buying up a quarter of the world's traded palm kernel, is helping to fuel this destruction," Greenpeace New Zealand communications manager Suzette Jackson said.
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