The Monk Seal Conspiracy

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19. The Expulsion

On 3 August we returned to Samos to pursue our efforts in establishing the Seitani reserve, and to obtain the work and residence permits which had been offered by the prefect. When we arrived, though, we were informed that the police had already been searching for us.

The following day we were ordered to report to Samos police headquarters and there discovered that a newly appointed chief of police had replaced Kyrios Drumpis. A stodgy and bloated man with a round face and bad complexion, he seemed even less refined than his predecessor, and as nondescript as the faceless bureaucracy which he served. He informed me that an YPEA command had been issued ordering me to leave Greek soil within ten days. The YPEA hierarchy evidently had a sense of humour after all, since this meant that I would have to leave Greece by Friday the 13th or face arrest. As requested, I signed an official notification to this effect. However, the police chief made it abundantly clear that I should be out of Samos by Friday the 6th, a date which also seemed thoroughly superstitious to YPEA since this was the very day of the Environment Minister’s official visit to Samos.

I then telephoned the minister’s personal secretary who told me that Antonis Tritsis had received a warning from YPEA not to intervene in the affair. Still convinced that corruption was dictating events, and that the minister was being hoodwinked, she advised me to seek an interview with Mr Tritsis through the nomarchia. But the prefect’s attitude towards us had changed drastically; he had conveniently forgotten his glowing praise of our work and his promises of support, and he adamantly refused to allow us a meeting with the minister.

On 6 August I returned to Athens to drum up support among the press, while Rita remained on Samos with the intention of meeting the minister in spite of the suspiciously strenuous objections of the prefect. But just as she prepared to drive to the public meeting where the minister was due to speak, she discovered that the clutch of the car was broken; the cable had been cut. By walking and hitch-hiking to Vathi, she at last arrived at the meeting hall just as question time was due to begin. Plucking up her courage, she asked the minister to comment on the Seitani development and YPEA’s order for my expulsion. Were they perhaps connected? Furious that she had dared to ask the question, the prefect snatched the microphone before the minister could reply, and with a voice trembling with anger, told her that the issue had been ‘fully discussed many times before’. But on the very same day, the bulldozers had again been working on the Seitani road – evidently without the minister’s knowledge. Although Mr Tritsis was taken to Seitani on Sunday 8 August – when the workmen were conveniently at rest – he only surveyed the area by boat and therefore did not witness the full extent of the damage caused by the continuing development.

On 9 August Rita and I paid a visit to the Ministry of Environment and were told there by high-level officials that the minister regarded the establishment of the sanctuary as imperative. They were clearly astounded to hear that work was continuing on the Seitani road, and on the very day of their minister’s visit to Samos. Once again they repeated that my case was outside their jurisdiction, but did not advise me to comply with the YPEA order. They suggested petitions to the Prime Minister and stressed that Mr Tritsis still supported the project.

It was Friday the 13th, but no official bothered to inquire whether I had actually complied with the YPEA order. Rita called Mrs Natsoulis, the personal secretary to the Minister of Public Order, who told her YPEA had reported that I had already left the country. Three days later, our lawyer informed us that the case had become too serious for her practice to handle, since it now involved top-level national security concerns.

On 19 August, one of Greece’s most respected lawyers, Alexandros Lykorezos, agreed to act on my behalf. He stressed, however, that apart from court action following my expulsion, very little could be done. The following day, officials of the Intelligence Service for National Defence assured Mr Lykourezos that I would be permitted to stay in Athens unmolested until after his meeting with General Kapellaris, the chief of YPEA. The meeting took place on 23 August, and in a written statement Mr Lykourezos told me: ‘I visited him at his office and told him that, to the best of my knowledge, the decision to order your expulsion from Greece was totally unjustified, and asked for a new investigation into the matter. I expressed to him my suspicion that the whole problem was caused by people with specific interests at the Seitani area on Samos. Mr Kapellaris replied that his department had gone through several inquiries and that their decision was final. I then underlined to him your

decision to fight the case and bring it to the public through the news media. Mr Kapellaris told me that he wanted to avoid any scandal, but reasons of national security had dictated the department’s decision.’

Despite the disappointing outcome of the meeting, I decided not to obey the YPEA order. News correspondents were contacted, and I gave a series of interviews for the BBC in London. Perhaps because of the media’s traditional August doldrums, the newspaper headlines became embarrassingly sensational: ‘ "Save the Seals" Man Faces Deportation’, ‘Seals Man Made to Go’, ‘Banned Seal Man Goes Into Hiding’. In the meantime, I was also informed by Judith Weber that the Foundation would send a publicized protest telegram to the Prime Minister, Andreas Papandreou. The telegram was never sent.

26 August: Two agents from the Aliens Police arrived at my hotel and requested me to accompany them to their headquarters. They had received a telex from the Minister of Public Order, Mr Skoularikis, to detain me. However, the same officials discovered that my immigration file was missing and that the telex did not actually stipulate what was to be done with me – arrest or expulsion. Feeling rather embarrassed, they told me I was free to go.

30 August: Still waiting for the promised telegram from the Franz Weber Foundation, I telephoned Montreux. Over the previous weekend, Judith Weber informed me, the FWF committee had decided to halt the project. With strain cracking her voice, she stated that ‘we are unable to work under such conditions,’ end that a formal notification to this effect would be sent to me by telex. It never arrived. Furthermore, Mrs Weber said, the FWF was only willing to provide 20,000 drachmas for us to finish our work and return to Switzerland. Having received not one franc in promised wages during 1982, I informed her that this amount would not even be enough to pay upcoming project bills, but the Webers obstinately refused to provide more. After all we had been through we were determined not to leave Greece under such capitulating conditions, and both Rita and I borrowed money from our parents.

On 1 September, Rita was told by YPEA that there had been a change in their expulsion order: I was now permitted to stay in Greece until my three-month visa expired – but under no circumstances was I allowed to return to Samos. If I did, I would be arrested and charged. It was obvious that this shift in policy had been induced by fears of a public scandal, and apprehension that my expulsion might provoke embarrassing court action against the government. But of course, YPEA’s first priority had already been realized: the project to protect the monk seal in the eastern Aegean and to establish the Seitani sanctuary had been wrecked.

On 2 September, Rita and I resumed to the Ministry of Environment only to discover that the attitude towards Seitani had changed drastically. One official, Mrs Kelaidis, supposedly responsible for conservation of threatened species and their habitat, told us with bland nonchalance: ‘Let them build the road and the houses and then if the ministry decides to turn the area into a reserve we’ll pull down the houses and close the road. But we can only make a reserve if there are seals there.’ I thought I was dreaming. I stammered that one could hardly expect seals to remain in the area happily co-existing with bulldozers and dynamite. She replied: ‘We have no proof that they are using dynamite or that the development is continuing. But we could always tell them not to use dynamite. We don’t have any authority over the road itself – that’s a matter for the Ministry of Public Works and the nomarchia.’

I restrained an impulse to scream. Agence France Presse had been told by a government spokesman on 19 March that a Presidential Decree for Seitani had been promised ‘in the weeks to come’. It was now obvious by now that YPEA had not only warned the ministry to stay out of the spying issue, but to stay out of Seitani as well. But why? Whatever the reasons, it certainly explained the futility of the minister’s efforts to halt the development of the ‘strictly protected’ area. And was it really the nomarchia which was financing the construction, or were they perhaps proceeding with the development on behalf of a government institution more powerful than the Environment Ministry – the Ministry of Defence for example? Once again, why? Slowly, agonizingly, the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit together.

We realized that the only avenue open to us now was to prove that the spying charges were absurd. Certain that I would be arrested – and hoping that a court case would enable me to clear my name – on 6 September I resumed to Samos and immediately informed the police of my arrival. The police chief gruffly told Rita that I was on the island illegally and that he would be forced ‘to take appropriate measures’. Despite his threats, however, there was no intervention by the police or YPEA, and I was able to stay on the island unmolested until 21 October, for 44 days! But YPEA also knew that our influence was now almost non-existent. We had been abandoned by our organization, the project was wrecked, and the rumours of spying had destroyed our credibility. We were now totally alone. Only on Samos our Greek friends stood resolutely by us, although they were powerless to help. According to General Kapellaris, ‘reasons of national security’ had dictated YPEA’s decision to expel me and this decision was ‘final’. Yet here I was on Samos again, a notorious spy free to roam the island as I wished.

On 8 September, Rita telephoned the director-general of the Ministry of Public Order and pointedly asked why I hadn’t been arrested. He replied with amicable embarrassment that ‘the ministry is in the process of taking the necessary steps’ and that ‘there will be a solution.’

On the same day we were told that a Professor Mirsilis of the University of Patras had recently addressed the Gorgyra association in Karlovassi, and alleged that a consortium of German and American bankers was backing the development of Seitani. Several years earlier, the professor had waged a successful battle against the construction of a cement factory on the western edge of Seitani, and he believed that the area was now more imperilled than it had ever been before. He declared that the patriarchs of Karlovassi were determined to spruce up the town for tourism. Its decayed tanneries and other fallen industries were a blot on the town’s prestige, and they had long harboured dreams of developing Potami and its hot springs into a spa resort, and of building the road to Megalo Seitani. With this magnificent sandy beach in their possession, Karlovassi, once the capital of Samos, could begin to reclaim its former glory. Already there was a signpost at Potami, indicating the site of a hotel complex, although no building was yet under way. In the course of events during the year, the patriarchs and their German and American backers had become understandably media-shy. Perhaps it was only sheer coincidence that Franz-Josef Strauss, leader of Bavaria’s ultra-conservative Christian Social Union, had recently made a curious lightning visit to Samos for what were termed ‘purely personal reasons’.

Intrigued by these new events, we decided that Rita should set ‘off for Patras to meet the professor, but regrettably he could add little more to the vague and sketchy information we had already heard in Karlovassi. He had arrived at a dead end in his own investigations, having recently been told by the National Tourist Organization of Greece that it was illegal for them to divulge information on development projects which were still under consideration. But this in no way implied, they had hastened to add, that this particular project was under government examination.

By the time Rita returned, it was already 4 October and I had encountered no problems with officialdom during her absence, despite my supposedly illegal presence on Samos. Any endeavour to determine the plans of the police and YPEA always resulted in further threats of arrest, trial or expulsion, but these never materialized. Supposedly, I was a grave risk to national security, yet I was permitted – without any form of surveillance – to wander around the island for weeks on end. But we were running out of time.

Back in my house I gathered together all my reports, diaries and notes, trying to fit together the jigsaw puzzle of the Conspiracy. And slowly it began to dawn upon me. After all these years, it seemed mortifyingly simple, as though we had been incapable of seeing the wood for the trees. YPEA was determined to push us out of Greece, but to do so quietly, so that not only would no one hear of the destruction of Seitani, but also no one would suspect the existence of the Monk Seal Conspiracy – how the Ministry of Defence, unwilling to compromise, had effectively signed the death warrant of the Mediterranean Monk Seal.

First of all, there was the squabble over territorial rights in the eastern Aegean, an area rich in oil and mineral deposits. There were the Greek threats to sink Turkish seismic survey vessels if they ventured out of their own narrow ribbon of waters. There were the off-shore oil drilling platforms on the west of Thasos, managed since 1974 by Canadian, American, and German multinationals. These wells were rapidly drying up and the consortium, by hook or by crook, was determined to move its rigs fifteen kilometres to the east of the island, where the oil reserves were said to be far richer, justifying an investment of up to US $1,000 million. But Turkey had already made it abundantly clear that if the rigs were to be moved into these disputed waters there would be war with Greece, since there would then be no hope of resolving the territorial rights issue by negotiation. And whilst the oil companies fervently desired co-operation between Greece and Turkey in the exploitation of the seabed, Greece was irrevocably opposed, believing that it would give Turkey their first foothold in the Aegean, and encourage their coveted designs upon the eastern Aegean islands.

Then of course there were those imaginative International Marine Parks, sponsored by IUCN/WWF and formulated by the Canadian Professor Keith Ronald and his Turkish-Canadian colleague, Professor Fikret Berkes. Despite the proud Realism governing IUCN/WWF policy at Gland, these four international parks had been specifically designed to encourage political co-operation between Greece and Turkey, and would have stretched across some of the most sensitive points between the two countries, both from a military and a natural resource perspective. It may of course only be sheer coincidence that the WWF International Council, the board of directors of WWF USA, and the confidential membership list of WWF’s 1001 Club, include presidents and chairmen from some of the world’s largest oil corporations, such as British Petroleum, Texaco, Atlantic Richfield, Shell, and the Exxon Chemical Company.

The unholy alliance between conservation and chemicals did however create casualties. In 1980, the prestigious Norwegian Association of Nature Conservationists broke away from WWF Norway because of the latter’s refusal to protest against proposed oil drilling in cod breeding grounds in the North Atlantic. Yet even this did not seem to deter WWF from its craving for corporate sponsorship from the oil industry. The organization also welcomed Texaco’s proposal to link the company’s introduction of unleaded fuel to ‘WWF’s efforts to save nature’. The result was a massive advertising campaign, with the WWF panda proclaiming: ‘Fill up for economy, fill up for nature.’ According to WWF the publicity was ‘expected to generate a 1 per cent increase in the market share for Texaco. The campaign, the most extensive the company has ever run, has earned exceptional support from Texaco dealers.’

It may also only be coincidence that Professor Ronald, as a member of the executive committee of WWF Canada, shared his privileged position with several 1001 Club members, representing such enterprises as Petrofina Canada Ltd, the Canadian Petroleum Association, Calgary Petroleum Ltd, Alberta Natural Gas, Noranda Mines, Union Gas and the Independent Petroleum Association. It may only be sheer coincidence, too, that the Canadian corporation Denison Mines, holding a 61.87 per cent stake in oil drilling off Thasos, is also a member of the Independent Petroleum Association.

But had 1001 Club funds found their way into the International Marine Parks venture? From a confidential memo authored by Fikret Berkes on 7 January 1980 – which I only caught a fleeting glimpse of at WWF/IUCN headquarters, the answer seems to be a resounding ‘yes’. The memo describes a transfer of 1001 funds to WWF Turkey, with Berkes also adding the humorous and cryptic remark: ‘Maybe they should pay us in oil and gold instead.’

In any event, the suspicions of the Greek government had soon been aroused by Ronald’s high-level meetings in Turkey, and Ankara’s unabashed enthusiasm in embracing his proposals. But whether or not there were any genuine grounds for suspicion would have been virtually irrelevant for YPEA which, like so many intelligence services the world over, suffers chronic confusion between real and imaginary threats to national security. Privy to the highest secrets of state, it seemed almost certain that YPEA must have drawn connections between WWF, the Canadian-inspired International Parks plan, and Denison Mines, the Canadian corporation which desperately wanted to move its oil rigs into disputed waters. Certainly, even the most tenuous suspicions would have been sufficient justification for YPEA to scuttle any monk seal protection in the eastern Aegean. Indeed, the intelligence agency may well have concluded that our project on Samos was the front line for this bizarre conspiracy over oil and seals.

According to rumour in Athens, at least, YPEA suspected the International Parks scheme as a CIA-inspired plot designed to soothe hostilities between the two NATO countries, encourage negotiation over territorial rights, and pave the way for an unconstrained exploitation of the eastern Aegean’s lucrative natural resources. The entire International Parks plan had then come tumbling down like a house of cards.

With so much at stake in the eastern Aegean, the monk seal rapidly became a victim of political expedience. The military authorities in Greece were evidently prepared to sacrifice the seals rather than allow the creation of a network of sanctuaries which are vital to save the species. These sanctuaries would have to be entirely free of disturbance – including military presence – and this is still regarded as intolerable by the Ministry of Defence. As I could see from the numerous reports I delved into, at least 17 proposed monk seal sanctuaries in the eastern Aegean had been rejected since 1976. Had the Ministry of Defence issued a top-secret directive which automatically vetoed the establishment of reserves in the east? If so, their resolve must have been immeasurably strengthened by the International Parks fiasco which became implicitly equated with risks to national security.

Click to enlarge

The Eastern Aegean, showing the 19 monk seal sanctuaries rejected by the Greek government since 1976, including Seitani.

Despite international pressure to protect the species, there are still no monk seal sanctuaries in the eastern Aegean. In fact the only reserve lying close to the Turkish borders is the Evros bird sanctuary – also in a tense military zone. There was a long and bitter struggle by ecologists to persuade the Ministry of Defence to allow protection of the area, and this might be one reason why the military authorities now refuse to consider sanctuaries for the monk seal in the eastern Aegean. The Evros reserve is even administered by the military and no one is permitted to visit the area without a military permit.

Looking back on the events of our years in Greece, all seemed to lead to this inevitable conclusion. The monk seal had been sacrificed on the altar of national security.

When His Excellency A. Chorofas of the Permanent Greek Mission to the United Nations dispatched his representative to Gland in April 1980, time had been of the essence. Although our press release had only appeared in a few minor newspapers that morning, the danger of this hidden secret being exposed was enough to have Danellis sent scurrying to IUCN/WWF headquarters in an effort to kill any further media coverage and investigation of the affair. Indeed, the swiftness and efficiency was entirely incongruous given Greece’s normally stultifying bureaucracy, and this in itself illustrated the gravity of the situation. Judging by their inordinately intimidated reactions when I arrived at Gland later that same day, the organizations’ compliant silence had been assured through some form of coercion which can hardly have been subtle. Had Danellis perhaps carried, in his diplomat’s attaché case, YPEA’s secret allegations of collusion between WWF, their international co-ordinator, the 1001 Club and the Canadian-dominated consortium drilling for oil off Thasos? Had Danellis threatened to publicly divulge those allegations should IUCN/WWF refuse to back down and disassociate themselves from our endeavours to have the affair investigated in the media? Had this in turn induced the hierarchy at Gland to commence its lengthy and ritual ‘dumping’ procedure against their international coordinator, which finally ended in a blazing row?

But Danellis may also have carried other orders. Rather than rushing to Gland simply to complain about my lifestyle, he may have bluntly informed the organizations that because of ‘national security’ their proposals for eastern Aegean reserves would inevitably prove fruitless. In turn this explained why IUCN/WWF did not merely replace me with someone possessing a more impeccable lifestyle, but killed the entire project instead and, a year later, privately declared the monk seal to be ‘unsaveable’. They knew perfectly well that I couldn’t keep that kind of secret to myself.

Also lending weight to this hypothesis was my chance meeting in June 1982 with Dr Constantine Vamvakas, who had been booted out of his directorship of the Ministry of Co-ordination’s Oceanographic Institute. It was then I learnt for the first time that on the inter-ministerial committee which had been convened to assess our project in 1979, the Ministry of Defence, who harboured grave doubts about us, only agreed not to veto the project on condition that we carry out no research work in the eastern Aegean, effectively prohibiting us from creating sanctuaries for the monk seal. But with mounting pressure from abroad, including the Council of Europe and the EEC, Yeroulanos and Vamvakas could not bring themselves to enforce the restriction and perhaps never had any intention of doing so. This explained the strenuous tug of war which developed between the civilian and military sections of the government, and why the orders of two ministers had been persistently flouted by the developers at Seitani: they, after all, were being protected by a much higher power.

But was Seitani under commercial or military development? In fact the question was largely academic, since both interests could quite happily coexist in the area. The road that was built to ferry tourists to Megalo Seitani’s sable shores at the height of the season could also be used by army convoys for the rest of the year. Hotels and restaurants would not preclude the construction of a discreetly camouflaged military base perched on the hillside. Both entrepreneurs and generals could win their much-coveted prize; the only obstacle was the monk seal and us. This marriage of convenience explained why no one had been able to trace the funds being poured into the Seitani development.

This in turn suggested the reason why YPEA was able to cling so tenaciously to its secret allegations against the project and why so much camouflage and intrigue was necessary to hound us out of the country. In the final analysis, they refused to arrest me simply because there was something much deeper to hide. What had to be concealed from the public was not only complicity at Seitani. Since the heyday of the Rhodes Conference, YPEA and the Ministry of Defence had been well aware of the monk seal’s imminent extinction and the international concern to protect the species. It was precisely because of this international concern that the Ministry of Defence stipulated that its immutable veto of eastern Aegean sanctuaries was top secret. To announce it publicly would be to sign the death warrant of the monk seal before a world audience.

A golden autumn gently settled upon the island and I relished my last few days on Samos; I knew that once I had left the country, I might never be able to return again. Swift light clouds looming over mountain cypresses like wild geese. A coppice of sunflowers against a beach-stone house. The sound of rain trickling into a water-butt beneath wooden "uttering. Higher in the mountains, heavy and ominous storm clouds being chased away by an exuberant wind. The wind was tired of the clouds and it jostled them away over the peaks above us in our tiny houses and kalivis. A few days later, the autumn storms would come rolling in again from the sea, wild birds scattering, and at night, lightning would begin to sear the sky over Turkey; with the distant rumbling of thunder it would sometimes seem as though we were already at war. Clouds and mist would swamp the mountain villages, like Ambelos itself, only hours before a string of crooked lights against the silhouetted peaks in a limpid night sky, constellations tilting over.

We went to the autumn feste in Ambelos, the sound of the bouzouki and the traditional songs of freedom resounding through the steep and winding streets, the papas now drinking his wine and raki out of a teacup because of complaints of his drunkenness. And I even danced for the first time, a Greek dance with the people of the village, a long line of us, curling through the caféneon and out over the terrace under the diminishing vines.

I would spend the fleeting days roaming the coasts and mountain pathways, higher and higher until the village was just a fleck of red roofs nestled against the gold and copper mountainside, the sea far below blue as far as the eye could see. Looking down from these high ranges, the island’s spiritual power seemed suddenly lucid; obvious, its silent, unthreatening pride, its grace and serenity. There were light racing clouds in the autumnal sky, the kind that swirl around within themselves, clouds that, as the sunlight suffuses them, become like the intricate prisms of an eye.

I would pass ramshackle houses, deserted and overgrown with weeds. Decaying watermills where mountain torrents once ground this ghost village’s barley into flour. On higher slopes I’d come across crumbling windmills whose white canvas sails used to turn in the blue meltemi. Was I being hopelessly naive, hopelessly idealistic? Perhaps, and yet I was still haunted by a soulful defiance, believing implicitly that these innate expressions of creativity, idealism and vision were as much endangered by Reality’s cynicism as any disappearing animal and plant. Here, in these dying villages, there seemed to be a hidden dream of the future, a civilization which with creativity and inspiration could rekindle the invisible bond of consciousness between humanity and Mother Earth. Villages emerging from their vulnerable backwardness yet retaining their deep and innate simplicity, a transcendental blend of wilderness and cultivation. A village revival, adopting not a culture alien and injurious to them, but one intimately linked to their own traditions.

In my mind’s eye I saw graceful windmills fuming again in the meltemi, now not only grinding grain, but lighting and heating the houses too; how the solar collectors would arc across the sky with the movement of the sun, how the wooden paddles of the water mill would again be driven by the mountain stream. How this arched stone bridge would be repaired with the hands of a craftsman, not demolished and replaced by concrete. Or this ancient amphitheatre, deserted, overgrown with weeds, unused for two thousand years, once again full of people, enraptured by a play or concert under a starry sky. How the villages would begin to attract the travellers of this world rather than the conveyor belt package tourists who care nothing for their culture. Or this bare mountainside once again covered with forest. Or this rich soil which could help Samos become the only island in Aegean to make wine and grow food as Nature intended, free of chemicals. Or these dying crafts revived again, weaving, pottery, copper and bronze work. And here, another ancient skill resuming to the island – a trout hatchery and other aquaculture projects to give the coastal waters the time and peace they need to recover. And in the future, perhaps, schools and a university of inter-disciplinary studies, where ecology would be taught as universal, embracing both Nature and human culture, and ultimately perhaps, even linking the spirit of the individual with the luminous mantle-like soul of the Earth. Were these not ways out of the devil’s alternative that the island faced, ghost village or city village?

But if such visions, burgeoning across the Earth, are to be more than idle dreams, more than scattered and vulnerable intimations against the Reality of our times, then where are the bridges that must heal the disintegration of humanity? Where are the bridges that, by re-creating a human ecology, will encourage a holistic perception of the Earth and clear the daunting and abstract confusion which allows the world’s momentous problems to multiply and grow ever more disfigured?

We are now nearing the critical point in the Unseen War, the threshold beyond which the living Earth will die. What is to be the fate of Earth? Finally and with urgency the question must be asked. The diametric wars of a diametric man? The nuclear winter? Famine and disease? A slow and agonizing death by development? An Earth preserved by sustainable development, neat and ordered, as sterile and soulless as a museum or a zoo? Whatever the answer, humanity faces a formidable challenge, probably the greatest the world has ever known, since it must, by implication, coalesce the most fundamental manifestations of existence, spirit and matter, which have been torn asunder by the schizophrenia of our species.

Teetering on the brink of the midnight hour, the Unseen War has become so devastating that nothing short of a peaceful planetary revolution, a revolution in consciousness, will be able to save the Earth. This is because a global awareness of a deep or universal ecology is essential simply in order for humanity to begin to recognize the vital inter relationships between the myriad aspects of the Unseen War. In the same way, only a universal ecology could ultimately hope to heal the schizophrenia of humanity, the disease which is causing the ravaging symptoms of the war.

Racked by fragmentation, even the so-called ‘alternative movement’ has contracted this virulent disease. Indeed, its stultifying disunity must be a favoured ally of the establishment, as long as those vast centralizations of Power can remain solid and intact themselves. It can be no coincidence that the paranoia of Power regards virtually any small-scale endeavour which might relieve people’s dependence upon it as a potential threat to its survival, and that alternative science and technology are lambasted as ‘utopian’ and are starved of funds. The philosophy of a ‘return to Nature’ is treated in the same way, with the establishment wheeling out its propaganda machine and the favourite scare scenarios which that contraption beams into urban minds: poverty, destitution, anarchy, a proud civilization reduced to living in damp caves. They realize all too well that the autonomous or community use of such alternatives would begin to cause a surge of revival in the dying villages of the world.

The movement today is actually a multitude of disparate organizations, groups and individuals, the majority of them strictly imprisoned within their own specializations – everything from bird preservation to protesting nuclear dumping, from saving the tropical rain forests to saving the village pond, from disarmament to anti-vivisection, from the protection of native peoples to biodynamic farming and solar energy. The diversity is both prodigious and confusing. And yet even today, at the height of the Unseen War, each organization is still characterized by its own rigid and stultifying borders, jealously guarding its own turf, competing with rivals, clinging myopically to its own specialization and, in the final analysis, ignoring the very definition of ecology. Although war and militarism are all-pervasive in their destruction, against all ecological rationality, the conservation and peace movements are separate entities, and the same is true of every specialization from human rights to solar energy. Fundamentally, this means that the movement is no movement at all, since these walls only serve to negate interdependence and alienate support at a grassroots level. Only beyond those walls are the individuals who could transform these myriad organizations into a mass movement: the disaffected young, frustrated by their inability to have any bearing on their own destiny, the people who inhabit the dying villages of the world, and the millions of concerned individuals who see no credible way of donating their talent and creativity to an all-embracing cause.

Yet for an idea whose time has come, the quest would now be to build, like craftsmen, an interrelating, holistic and federated Movement whose entire motivation would be to tackle the Unseen War as a whole and to build together, with imagination and ingenuity, the vision of a civilization which could live in harmony with Earth.

On a practical level, the Movement would act as a co-operative embracing all of the following specializations:

• Ecology and Environmental Protection.
• Peace and Disarmament.
• Third World Aid and Native Peoples.
• Human and Civil Rights and Consumer Affairs.
• Human Population Control.
• Animal Rights and Anti-Vivisection.
• Biodynamic Agriculture and Nutrition.
• Alternative Medicine.
• Alternative Economics.
• Revival of Dying Crafts.
• Alternative Architecture, Technology and Energy.

These would also be joined by the more progressive wings of the world’s religions, and by teachers, photographers, writers, artists and musicians and many others whose membership of the co-operative could provide every project of every federated group with the skills vital to make that project a success. Fundamentally, it is these interrelationships which would become the foundations of an organic revolution, and perhaps the cradle of a civilization which in itself would become ecologically holistic, gently lifting and dispersing power from its present concentrations.

With the dynamic co-operation of these diverse specializations, it can be anticipated that the Movement’s total effectiveness would become profoundly greater than the sum of its parts. A grassroots involvement could be expected almost immediately, sparking the chain reaction which would rapidly create a powerful mass movement. And here, the responsibility for saving the Earth would be removed from its present concentrations of power and imparted to the individual. In turn, the influence of the Movement would be magnified immeasurably by this change in individual consciousness. At the economic level alone, an unprecedented pressure could be brought to bear upon industry and commerce by the diversion of personal wealth to more ecology-friendly enterprises.

Yet no one could expect humanity to embrace a mere vision of an alternative civilization. Realizing that the cities are becoming obsolete and destined for inevitable decay, civilization must return to the dead and dying villages of the world. Their restoration would become the focal point in creating a touchable vision of the future, since they alone would be capable of exploding the myth of 20th-century gigantism and the chemico-mechanistic doctrine of contemporary city-based civilization.

In striving to create a village-based civilization in harmony with the natural world, these communities would think and act both locally and globally. Ecologists would work side by side with stonemasons, biodynamic farmers and solar energy engineers, with teachers, musicians and alternative economists. It is here, on active projects, that the borders between people, nations and professions would come tumbling down, that bridges of communication would be built between diverse specializations, links which would become the life-force of human and universal ecology.

By the middle of October, Mickey Kaufmann and Jonathan Thomas of Greenpeace had arrived on Samos, though more for personal relaxation than any Greenpeace commitment to our ailing endeavours to save Seitani. The pashas at Greenpeace International were apparently loathe to offend Andreas Papandreou who styled himself a keen supporter of Greenpeace. On 11 October I vainly presented myself at Samos police headquarters to apply for a visa, but was received with a contemptuous laugh: ‘You’re Mr Johnson. You cannot get another visa. You have to leave the country immediately.’ But again, despite the ritual threats of arrest and expulsion, nothing happened even though my existing visa had already expired.

On 17 October we visited Seitani again, this time with Mickey and Jonathan. To our dismay, we discovered that a long concrete wall had now been constructed with an adjacent terrace prepared for building, perhaps the site of some future villa or restaurant. Bricks and other building materials were piled along the road. I was photographed sitting on top of the bricks and standing against the wall looking like a convict or hostage, with a newspaper in my hands to confirm the date. These could then be compared to photographs taken a month earlier, but the sad fact was that officialdom and the embarrassed environmental groups in Europe found the proof just too inconvenient to believe.

During our walk along the pathway to Megalo Seitani, we observed three hunters entering one of the main seal caves by boat, and a few moments later heard a volley of gunshots. Was the plan now to arrange the slaughter of the Seitani seals, so that it would be pointless to establish the sanctuary? A few hours later we reported the incident to the Karlovassi port police, but they told us, with supreme indifference, that although such incidents were ‘regrettable’ they could take no action unless the Ministry of Agriculture was actually willing to ban hunting in the area. As if to justify their convenient nonchalance they added: ‘We have no evidence that they are killing seals.’

A few days later, we had decided upon our course of action. Almost penniless, it was the only avenue left open to us. It was necessary to prove publicly, once and for all, that the allegations against me were false, made only to mask the scandal at Seitani and the Monk Seal Conspiracy. And so, on 20 October, I informed YPEA and the chief of police that I intended to make a one-day trip to Turkey. If I succeeded, I would be granted an automatic three-month visa on entering Samos again. But if the authorities really thought I was a Turkish spy, they would either arrest me, prevent me from leaving, or at least search me before I boarded the Stella, a tourist ship bound for Kusadasi.

Early the following morning I passed through Greek customs, but not one of the officials showed the slightest interest in searching my baggage or looking for any secret documents I might have been carrying. However, upon my return to Samos that evening I was met off the boat by a reception committee composed of the highest police and port police officials, the public prosecutor, and several intelligence officers from YPEA and KYP. Once again, however, I was not searched. I was told that I was being detained because of an order barring my entry to the country. I requested that the British consul, Mrs Marc, be summoned. The request was granted. I was detained under armed guard for over 36 hours at the Customs Office, without food, washing or sleeping facilities. I was forced to sleep on the concrete floor under bright fluorescent lights, without even a blanket, and Mrs Marc complained to the chief of police that the conditions under which I was being held contravened international regulations on the treatment of prisoners. The police chief cynically replied that I was not a prisoner, but only ‘under detention’.

Further requests for meetings with the consul were denied. With a few notable exceptions, the police and port police officers who guarded me were amiable and intrigued by my story, much to the chagrin of the YPEA agents and the chief of police. They read a copy of the Epikaira article which I had with me, looked at me knowingly with a mixture of admiration and sympathy, and shot resentful glances towards the gruff agents of YPEA. They knew instinctively that some high-level corruption was dictating the affair, and pleaded with me, perhaps to soothe their own consciences and helplessness, to come back to Samos again as soon as I could. It hurt them that they should have to force me into Turkey against my will.

On 23 October 1982 at approximately 7 a.m. I was taken forcefully onto the Stella, bound once again for Kusadasi. I was accompanied by two police officers, two officials of the port police, and two YPEA agents. The police threatened to arrest anyone taking photographs of the incident, and posted officers around the harbour to ensure that their order was obeyed. As soon as Rita came on board to say goodbye to me, the YPEA agents seized her aggressively and began pushing her out of the saloon. A heated argument erupted and only the timely intervention of the port police managed to prevent the agents from striking her. The Stella left Vathi harbour an hour later, closely shadowed by a patrol boat of the customs authorities. Just before entering Turkish territorial waters, the patrol boat manoeuvred close to the Stella and all but one of the officials, an YPEA agent, boarded the grey launch to return to Samos. The Stella then made its way to Kusadasi, and I was accompanied by the remaining YPEA agent onto Turkish soil. In fact the agent even followed me as far as Izmir – an unbelievably reckless act since, if we had been apprehended, we could both have ended up in one of the Turkish military government’s notorious prison camps.

The author’s expulsion from Greece on 23 October 1982. The Stella moves out of Samos harbour escorted by a patrol boat

Making my way up from Izmir to Istanbul by coach, I could sense the fear and submission of the people. Armoured cars, tanks and road-blocks. We repeatedly had to stop at military checkpoints, where army officers brandishing submachine guns would walk down the aisle checking documents, quite prepared, I felt sure, to open fire on the whole bus-load of people if only one passenger tried to escape. In Istanbul the following day, I telephoned the British Embassy which immediately offered me financial assistance to fly to Switzerland, agreeing that it would be prudent for me to leave the country at once, before the Turkish military authorities heard of the incident.

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