14/12/2005.

Five Greenpeace activists clambered aboard a decommissioned French aircraft carrier on Monday 12 December to protest against plans to send the asbestos-riddled ship to India for scrapping. The protesters jumped from small boats to the hull of the 44-year-old Clemenceau, kept in the Mediterranean port of Toulon after being mothballed in 1997, and climbed up a crane on the ship, from where they unfurled a banner reading: "Asbestos carrier: not here, nor elsewhere". Greenpeace said it organised the stunt to call attention to the carcinogenic danger posed by the vessel and to call on the French government to remove the asbestos itself instead of sending the carrier to India. "It is clear that the government is unable today to manage the decommissioning of its military and merchant ships. We ask that the government start a national strategy of dismantling them that observes international law, human rights and the environment," said the head of Greenpeace France, Pascal Husting.

The French government intends to send the Clemenceau to India to be broken down into 22,000 tonnes of scrap metal.
Although some of the asebestos insulation has been removed, Greenpeace and an anti-asbestos group, the Jussieu Committee, say the bulk of the 210 tonnes of the dangerous fireproofing remains.

"Decontamination is very expensive and so the easiest thing to do is to send it to other countries where labour laws can be easily flouted," said activist Madhumita Dutta of pressure group Corporate Accountability Desk.
Dutta said in a statement released in New Delhi that India did not have the proper technology, equipment or procedures in place to handle the decontamination of the Clemenceau.

"The workers use the most unsophisticated methods to break the ship down. Even one fibre of asbestos can cause serious medical problems," she said.

To highlight the human and environmental costs of shipbreaking, Greenpeace has also published a report titled End of Life Ships, which highlights poor working conditions at shipbreaking yards all over the world.

Source: AFP