Brazilian Navy Suddenly Seizes its Old Warship Forcing it to Sea

NGOs Urgently Call on President Lula to Prevent Navy from Sinking Toxic Ship in the Atlantic

Brussels, Belgium. January 21, 2023.  The former Brazilian Aircraft Carrier named SÃO PAULO, laden with asbestos, PCBs and other toxic waste materials, was seized on Friday and forced out to sea by the Brazilian Navy claiming in an official notice yesterday that the move had to be done as the vessel was supposedly in imminent danger of running aground or sinking off the Brazilian coast.  

Green groups that have been closely following the saga of the SÃO PAULO were shocked over this move and are not convinced by the Navy's sudden rationale that the ship poses an imminent danger.  They note that while it has been known for weeks that there are minor breaches in the hull in need of repair, the Navy itself refused for over three months to allow the vessel to return to one of its facilities for repair or survey.  The NGOs greatly fear that the Navy intends to never have the ship be returned to a port, never be re-examined for its quantity of hazardous wastes onboard, toxicity and suspected radioactivity, and will instead use an excuse of a small leak in the ship’s structure to force its sinking in the Atlantic Ocean.  

"It is now clear that the Navy does not want to receive any further scrutiny it would surely receive by returning home the SÃO PAULO, and it looks like they will now try to sink it using a false excuse -- out of sight, out of mind," said Jim Puckett, Executive Director of the Basel Action Network (BAN).  "The Navy has already taken the law into its own hands and is poised now to perpetrate a major environmental crime at sea unless President Lula as commander-in-chief intervenes."

Navy Operations Ship NAPOC PURUS, the ship now reportedly towing the SÃO PAULO 170 nautical miles from the Brazilian coast after being seized by the Brazilian Navy.

BAN is citing the illegal seizure of a privately owned ship, as well as defiance of the Basel Convention. The latter requires the aircraft carrier to be safely returned to Brazil with Brazilian assistance, which the Navy has refused for three months. The London Protocol further forbids the intentional sinking of vessels unless all efforts have been first made to rid the ships of toxic waste residual materials such as heavy metals, asbestos and PCBs.    

In a meeting held on 29 December, a Navy representative already alluded  to a possible contingency action of sinking the ship.  At that meeting, the issue of the small leak in the SÃO PAULO’s hull was discussed, and it was concluded that the ship was not in imminent danger of sinking but should still be returned to a Brazilian port to undergo repairs prior to being put out to bid again for recycling.  Following that meeting and a few weeks after the Lula Administration was installed, the coalition of NGOs wrote a letter to the new Minister of the Environment and Climate Change and to the director of IBAMA, the Brazilian Agency responsible for fulfilling Brazil's legal obligations under international law. The NGOs also issued a press release calling for the urgent safe docking of the vessel, fearing that it would indeed be abandoned by the Turkish owners. Within 24 hours of that press release, the Brazilian Navy, citing imminent hazard to the Brazilian population and  environment, inexplicably seized the vessel and forced a commercial tow ship to take it out to sea. 

In addition to the economic loss of a vast quantity of secondary steel the SÃO PAULO contains, a forced sinking by the Brazilian government would result in hundreds of tonnes of asbestos, toxic and persistent PCBs, heavy metal-laden paints and possible radioactive materials to be released into the marine environment in violation of international law (London Protocol 1996) [1].

“We call on President Lula as commander-in-chief of the Brazilian Navy to intervene immediately and give orders to bring the SÃO PAULO back into Rio de Janeiro to be received at the same Navy dock from which it left or find a suitable recycling destination," said Ingvild Jenssen, Director of the NGO Shipbreaking Platform. "Intentionally sinking this toxic aircraft carrier would equate to a state-sponsored environmental crime."  

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For more information:

Jim Puckett, Executive Director of BAN

email: jpuckett@ban.org

Ingvild Jenssen, NGO Shipbreaking Platform,

email: ingvild@shipbreakingplatform.org

About Basel Action Network

Founded in 1997, the Basel Action Network (BAN) is a 501(c)3 charitable organization of the United States, based in Seattle, WA. BAN is the world's only organization focused on confronting the global environmental justice and economic inefficiency of toxic trade and its devastating impacts. Today, BAN serves as the information clearinghouse on the subject of waste trade for journalists, academics, and the general public. Through its investigations, BAN uncovered the tragedy of hazardous electronic waste dumping in developing countries. For more information, see www.BAN.org.

About The NGO Shipbreaking Platform

The NGO Shipbreaking Platform is a coalition of environmental, human and labour rights organisations, headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. For more than 10 years, we have been fighting for shipbreaking workers’ right to a safe job, the use of best available technologies, and for equally protective environmental standards globally. With a broad base of support both geographically and in orientation we challenge the arguments of a powerful shipping industry not used to being held accountable for its substandard practices. We raise public awareness of the human rights abuses and pollution caused by shipbreaking, and seek to prompt both policies and marketplace incentives to divert traffic away from the infamous breaking beaches. Our goal is to find sustainable solutions that encompass the principles of human rights, corporate accountability, environmental justice, “polluter pays”, producer responsibility and clean production. For more information, see www.shipbreakingplatform.org.