|
Dolphin Protector Abducted and Beaten
 |
On Tuesday, August 19th, at about 8:30 pm, City Councilor, Lawrence Makili, was abducted from his home in Honiara, Solomon Islands, by eight men in two cars. He was then driven a few kilometers out of town when the thugs beat him and tried to kill him. |
Mr. Makili bravely fought back which was said to have saved his life. He received a broken right arm, fractured ribs, fractured, facial bone, and several other injuries. Mr. Makili has been an outspoken dolphin protector, trying to stop the traffic in captive dolphins in the Solomon Islands.
There are currently five different dolphin capture teams operating in the Solomon Islands. "Any one of them could be responsible for this," stated Richard O'Barry, Director of Save Japan Dolphins Coalition.
Mark Berman of Earth Island Institute said, "Lawrence Makili was a victim of attempted murder, simply for trying to help his country and their wild dolphin population. We will be returning to the Solomon Islands to do everything we can to find out who is responsible and bring them to justice."
At this time, the identities and motivations of the attackers are unclear and no arrests have been made regarding the incident.
The Marine Connection is extremely concerned by tour operators continued promotion of captive dolphin facilities, and believe that by refusing to stop selling to facilities which it is proven hold wild caught cetaceans, they are undermining the dangerous and difficult work of people like Lawrence Makili.
The Marine Connection recently contacted Virgin Holidays and Thompson/TUI regarding their promotion of the Palm Atlantis resort. As all of the dolphins in this facility were captured from the wild in the Solomon Islands, we asked them to stop their promotion of this facility and take a view on selling to facilities holding captive cetaceans in general, however as you will see from their response below, Virgin are currently happy to continue to promote this type of facility simply for profit, no matter how or where the dolphins (or whales) may be sourced from and in our view this is totally unacceptable.
 |
Read a copy of Virgins' response here
|
|
