Demand release of José judged for non-violent action of destroying transgenic rice plants

In the audience of appeal held in Montpellier, France, on November 22 and 23, 2001, the prosecutor pronounced very harsh punishments (prison sentences) against 3 French farmers judged for having neutralized, in June 1999 with Indian farmers, plantations of transgenic rice plants in a greenhouse of the CIRAD (Centre International de Recherche en Agriculture pour le Développement International Research Centre for Agriculture). The objective of this action was to seek public debate on a research program on transgenic rice.

The plants of rice were to be transplanted in Camargue, a nature reserve of world interest. The tests were designed to measure the productivity of a genetically manipulated variety of BT rice which produces its own systemic insecticide against the pyrale, and contains as gene marker a gene resistant to antibiotics. By destroying these rice plantations the Indian and French farmers wanted to protest against genetic manipulation of plants which put in danger their culture and their way of life.

For that demonstration of non-violent action, the prosecutor imposed 8 months of imprisonment against José Bové and a less harsh punishment for Dominique Soullier, Confederation paysanne's chairman for this French department. The court will make its final decision judgment on December 20, 2001.

But what is really being judged here?
For a number of years, seed and agribusiness transnationals have been trying to control the world market of seeds by using manipulated transgenic seeds to achieve this goal. The possibility of patenting discoveries on genes, the most elementary constituents of life, opens possibilities of realizing huge profits. These technologies strengthen farmers' dependence on the transnationals' inputs (seeds and pesticides). For these firms any delay in the distribution of their transgenic seeds is equal to financial loss. Thus any popular movement or any Farmers' Union that tries to prevent them from enslaving the world has to be destroyed or marginalized.

Greed and power ignore borders. French companies, just like other international firms, participate to this new 'golden seeds' rush. They lobby French scientific institutions to concentrate their work in genetic engineering while claiming that France should not delay its participation in this GMO commercial war.

Sad argument! If in France, like almost everywhere in the world, farmers and citizens fight against GMO, it is not a question of anti-patriotism or obscurantism. The problem is that this technology :

- allows the seed and agribusiness transnationals, thanks to patents on life, to deprive farmers of their ancestral right to plant their own seeds. Patents transform peasants in 'bio-pirates' if they plant GMO seeds without paying high royalties every year.
- is only a 'do-it-yourself' technology because honest researchers are still unable to explain scientifically the manipulation they are carrying out in their laboratories. They recognize that they do not master the result of their experiments and that they do not understand the complexity of genes interactions (for the moment it is only about a blind bombardment of genes on the chromosomes of reproductive cells whose result is totally unpredictable);
- has potentially irreversible hazards. It endangers biodiversity, animal and human health. For the moment there is terrible lacks of independent evaluation of the damages GMOs can cause to the environment. Those surveys are not carried out mainly because they are too long and too expensive, and because nobody seems willing to pay for them !
- is rejected massively by consumers when they are informed about its potential dangers on biodiversity and human health;
- whose short and medium-term economic interest for farmers both from rich and poor countries has yet to be demonstrated;
- will not contribute to solve malnutrition and reduce famine in the world which are not the result of a global shortage of food but rather of an unequal and unjust social and political system of distribution.

This hostility toward GMOs is a message addressed to politicians and researchers: public research and public money should not be invested to support private interests and make quick financial profits. On the contrary, public search should increase common knowledge, freely accessible to any scientist, and prevent technological risks.

Is French justice going to put in prison activists who contributed by their actions of passive resistance to alert politicians, citizens and researchers on the dangers of the GMO?

Justice is supposed to be administered in the name of the people. Supporting the actions of the Confederation Paysanne's activists, two of them being José Bové and Dominique Soullier, the signatories of this text ask that the activists who contributed to alert politicians and open public debate on the potential risks of GMOs not be punished for their action. We are opposed to the imposition of a prison sentence aimed at repressing this international movement against biotechnologies. Referring to the recent decisions of British courts for similar acts of GMO's neutralization, we ask that the court order the release of these activists on December 20 of this year.

I agree to sign the text to "Demand of release for the farmers charged for the non violent action of June, 1999 in the greenhouses of the CIRAD "