ST. JOHN’S, N.L. (CP) — A U.S.-based group — the Animal Liberation Front — is promoting a new anti-sealing campaign that targets tourism and small business in Newfoundland.
Instructions posted on the group’s website call the campaign an “exciting new strategy designed to strike a deathblow to the seal slaughter.”
The strategy “targets vulnerable, small tourist-based businesses in Canada’s sealing communities” and is “designed to inflict economic pain on a personal level.”
The new campaign involves a sophisticated, but fake, Newfoundland and Labrador tourism website.
The site is constructed to look like a typical tourism portal a photo gallery, but contains anti-sealing messages throughout and gory photos of dead seals.
While the ALF is promoting the campaign, it’s not clear exactly who is behind the actual website.
Ann Berlin, the group’s webmaster, told the St. John’s Telegram that it was sent to them as a site that contained relevant information.
“So we linked to it,” she said.
The creator of the fake tourism website is hiding its identity by using a privacy-protection firm as an intermediary in the registration process.
The fake site is registered to a company called Domains By Proxy Inc., located in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Messages sent to the fake website’s Domains By Proxy e-mail address were not answered this week.
The website claims to be “created in Canada by caring Canadians.”
There is no contact information on the website for its creators, however.
Two other high-profile anti-sealing organizations — Humane Society of the United States and the International Fund for Animal Welfare — denied any involvement in the website.
ALF has had involvement in other anti-sealing campaigns this year.
On April 17, ALF issued a communique claiming responsibility for bomb threats at Red Lobster restaurants in four American communities.
Some anti-sealing groups have pressured Red Lobster to stop selling Canadian seafood.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security considers ALF a domestic terrorist group.
The federal Fisheries Department recently reported this year’s seal hunt was one of the most successful ever, with a landed value between $25 million and $30 million I nearly double the $16.5 million recorded in 2005.
(St. John’s Telegram)
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