Posted on 03/24/2006 10:56:13 AM PST by yankeedame
Bardot faces seal-hunters protest
From: Agence France-Presse By Michel Comte in Ottawa
March 23, 2006
Ottawa --INUIT men defending their traditional hunting rights protested against French film star Brigitte Bardot today when she made an emotional call for an end to Canada's annual seal pup cull.
"You must join me to ensure this hunt stops," Bardot said in the capital Ottawa, standing with some difficulty, crutches at her side, in front of a huge poster showing a seal in a bogus pose clubbing a human baby. "How can we continue to kill seals in a rich country like Canada ... I am not crazy ... I am pleading with you," she said, holding back tears after watching with reporters gruesome video footage of the hunt.
"This will likely be my last visit to Canada before I die. I want to see this barbaric massacre stopped before then," she said.
A dozen Inuit youth in traditional garb waved placards and banged drums outside her hotel.
Bardot last came to Canada in 1977 and kicked off three decades of protests against the seal hunt by hugging a fluffy white doe-eyed pup on an ice floe for photographers.
Her return to Ottawa in poor health to try to lobby Prime Minister Stephen Harper comes after Canada's fisheries minister extended the hunt last week to 2010 and set a kill quota of a 325,000 animals this year, prompting protests in France and the United States. Officials said Harper and Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn would shun Bardot, best known for her role in the 1956 blockbuster movie And God Created Woman.
A handful of Canadian senators weighed in, reminding Bardot in a statement that "Canada is no longer a French colony".
Bardot said her fight was not with northern peoples' traditional way of life, which includes killing seals for meat and to make clothes, but with commercial sealers who profit from the hunt.
"Aboriginals don't conduct a commercial hunt," she said, flanked by US actress Persia White here to "represent Hollywood" and Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society who called sealers "savage".
The annual seal hunt earns about $C16.5 million (AU$20.35 million) in commercial meat and pelts for thousands of local fisherman.
Canada banned the killing of the youngest seals, less than 12 days old, in 1987 amid criticisms and threats of European boycotts that pushed the industry to the brink of collapse.
Breeding adults are off limits to hunters too, fisheries officials said.
Since then, the protests largely disappeared. But Canada awoke the wrath of activists in 2003 by approving a three-year cull of about 975,000 seals after estimating their population had ballooned to 5.9 million, nearly triple the number in the 1970s.
This coincided with the opening of new markets in China and Russia.
The Dalai Lama, former Beatle Paul McCartney and his wife Heather Mills McCartney, singer Charles Aznavour, actors Kim Bassinger, Juliette Binoche and Richard Dean Anderson, among many others, have campaigned against the hunt over the years.
Pretenderized and with stars, no less.
From what I understand, she already voiced her opinion about them and paid a heavy price for it in her home country of France. I dont know all the details, but she broke the law somehow....
Yeah - she looks like she's clubbed a few seals too many.
Has she actually been an actress or just a bimbo?
"The Dalai Lama, former Beatle Paul McCartney and his wife Heather Mills McCartney, singer Charles Aznavour, actors Kim Bassinger, Juliette Binoche and Richard Dean Anderson, among many others, have campaigned against the hunt over the years"
And in the off season are they standing on the side walks in front of abortion clinics tryng to prevent trying to provide the slaughter of the "baby humans"??
Have the has beens no other cause to put themselves back in the spotlight? I guess not. There are no starving children in
Africa, no Aids running rampant. Things are great in Darfur, and Zimbabwe. Panda's are not close to extinction in China, and all of the tigers are going well. Of course, those poor little harp seals are as close to extinction as one animal can get. I'm pretty sure that the gorilla's are doing well. As are the the rhinos. There are soooo many animals close to extinction, but they single out the harp seals. Who are not even close. They need to go deal with the poachers in Africa and Asia. We protect our endangered species here. They are wasting their time. And ours.
I am not a big supporter of the seal hunt. I have always hated it. But I hate it more when big mouth, so called used to be celebrities come in here and try to dictate to my country. That, my friends, makes me get my back up right away. Who the hell are they to demand anything from MY country. They aren't even citizens and they think they can come in here and tell us what to do. KMA buds. Has Beens, looking for face time. Okay, rant over for now. Doesn't mean I don't have the option of picking it up later.
LilyBean
Ya'll can make fun of her, but this is a barbaric act. If this were the clubbing to death of puppy dogs, would you still turn your back? I can smash an ant, or swat a fly, but kill a fellow mammal with a club for a few bucks......that is sick.
So you don't eat much meat, do you?
I eat meat too.
And tofu, and chitlins, and all kinds of things.
That isn't the issue.
It's not about food.
I'm with Jerimiah on this one.
All thoise against the seal hunt are moonbats.
I lived in Newfoundland for several years and there is no cruelty on the ice. One thump and the seal is dead.
Stop telling seal hunters what to do with their bodies!
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