cameroon

Today (Rome - 11th October 2005) 30 Greenpeace activists boarded a ship carrying rainforest timber at the Italian port of Livorno. Eight activists, dressed as gorillas, climbed two of the ship's cranes to prevent its cargo from being unloaded.

The 'Guan He Kou' is carrying sawn timber from the Congo Basin, where widespread illegal logging is destroying the forest and driving gorillas and chimpanzees towards extinction. The rainforest is also home to millions of indigenous people who depend on the forest for their survival.

Greenpeace are urging UK timber importers to boycott the Swiss-German Danzer Group. The call follows investigations which found that Danzer are involved in bribery, corruption, illegal logging, suspected forgery of official documents and carrying out business dealings with an arms trafficker, blacklisted by the UN Security Council (UNSC).

At 11am today, five Greenpeace climbers boarded the MV Roxane Delmas to stop wood from Central Africa's threatened "great ape" rainforest coming into the UK. The climbers have attached themselves to the stern door of the ship in the Thames Estuary, north of Sheerness, to prevent it from unloading its cargo at London's Tilbury Docks. 

Greenpeace is demanding that this timber, from the destruction of one of the world's remaining ancient forests, is returned to Cameroon. Investigations by Greenpeace indicate that the timber on board this ship includes sapele, identical to that used in the doors and windows at the Government's Cabinet Office in Whitehall (1). Other rainforest timber from the region is also onboard.

At 8am this morning Greenpeace volunteers entered the Cabinet Office in Whitehall and declared it an ancient forest crime scene - following an investigation which revealed the government was about to install hundreds of new doors and windows made of wood from Africa's last rainforests (1).