Daishowa Inc. Gag Order Fuels Support for Tribe and Global Boycott Story-Date: 03:23 p.m. PST Sunday , July 27, 1997 Daishowa Inc. Gag Order Fuels Support for Tribe and Global Boycott BY HEIDA DIEFENDERFER, INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY, RAPID CITY, S.D. Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Jul. 28--While Canadians await a court ruling on consumer boycotts and publicly debate freedom of expression, numerous international organizations are supporting the Lubicon Lake Cree First Nation. Since Daishowa Inc.'s injunction stalled Friends of the Lubicon's Canadian boycott, Australians have stepped up a consumer and investor boycott of the corporation and other multinational wood chip operations. In the United States, the Lubicon Defense Project in the Pacific Northwest began a letter-writing campaign focusing on US West, a regional company using Daishowa paper in telephone directories. The Native Forest Network (NFN) of Burlington, Vermont, in a June demonstration called for a boycott of the Burlington Free Press and Gannett newspapers using Daishowa newsprint. ``It really picked up after the injunction and SLAPP suit,'' said Phil FitzPatrick, NFN spokesman. Groups throughout Europe and Japan have supported FOL's Daishowa boycott, among them Britain's Catholic Action for Native Americans; Switzerland's Incomindios; the Austrian Society for Endangered Peoples; the Japan Tropical Forest Network; and the National Christian Council in Japan. Daishowa exports Canadian wood products to these regions. Editorials in the Seattle-based Boycott Quarterly, a publication of the Center for Economic Democracy, which does not endorse specific boycotts, in an exception to policy called for a boycott of Daishowa in response to its legal action to suppress freedom of speech. The Multinational Monitor, founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, called Daishowa ``rotten to the core'' and one of the 10 worst corporations of 1996 for its attempt to silence Canadian picketers. International groups say other corporations and governments also are accountable for assaults on the Lubicon Lake Cree, and for the eventual solution. A coalition of human rights, environmental and other groups formed the Unocal Information Campaign in 1995, an attempt to reform Unocal Corp. policies worldwide. A June 15 letter to the editor of Alberta's Edmonton Journal, from Dionys Zink, board member of the Association for the Support of North American Indians in Munich, Germany, stated: ``The possibility of a tourism boycott especially targeting the Calgary Stampede has been considered by Europeans -- and could be our way to react to governments running their country like an outdated banana republic, instead of honoring letter and spirit of international human rights agreements.'' The World Council of Churches (WCC), a multidenominational Geneva-based organization representing 330 churches in 105 countries, is a long-standing supporter of the Lubicon. The director of its Programme to Combat Racism, after a lengthy review of relevant documentation, concluded ``the Alberta Provincial Government and dozens of multi-national oil companies have taken actions which could have genocidal consequences.'' In a 1983 letter to the Prime Minister of Canada, he ``urges the federal and provincial governments of Canada to recognize and enact aboriginal titles, aboriginal rights and treaty rights in the Canadian Constitution in a manner and form acceptable to the aboriginal peoples themselves.'' Since then, the WCC has sent high-profile delegations to Lubicon territory, most recently in 1995. After that visit, Bishop Vinton Anderson, president of the World Council of Churches and bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., told CKUA Radio: ``Without a just settlement, the further exploitation of natural resources in Lubicon territory is not justifiable. ``The longer the time before the settlement of this long-standing dispute, the greater the accumulation of systemic injustice. This is tantamount to violence.'' ----- ON THE INTERNET: Visit Indian Country Today on the World Wide Web at http://www.indiancountry.com/ ----- (c) 1997, Indian Country Today, Rapid City, S.D. Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News. UCL, ------------------------------------------------------------