Cash incentives for whistleblower backfires badly for animal activists
As much as live export companies are under scrutiny for their treatment of sheep and cattle, animal activist groups also need to be held accountable for their tactics, writes Sharri Markson.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Sharri Markson: This is what Scott Morrison needs to do now
- Sharri Markson: Journos caught in crossfire of warring factions
It should have rung alarm bells for Animals Australia strategy director, Lyn White, when a live-export worker offered to make animals suffer to help her stop the trade.
A tranche of emails, obtained by The Daily Telegraph, show how animal activists, including White, cultivated whistleblowers on board live export vessels, offering them cash for vision of cruelty to animals.
One of White’s whistleblowers, a seafarer named Mahmood Raza Mazher, emailed her with “an idea” in January this year.
“What do you say that during loaded voyage Danish switch off supply/exhaust fan for 1-2 hours so that the sheeps/cattle will be in more distress,” Mazher wrote in an email.
“Just to capture video. These videos can put great impact on industry,” he continued.
When White pushed back, explaining this must not happen under any circumstances, Mazher pressed the point again in a follow-up email.
“OK Lyn. Understood your message. But switching off ventilation just for few minutes so that we could capture what we want. This will help us to make our opinion stronger. We are against live export and this can be only stopped if we bring 3-4 ships in front,” he wrote.
Mazher, a 26-year-old Pakistani, who is due to marry his fiance in October this year, was first recruited to the animal activist cause by his friend and housemate, Fazal Ullah in July 2016 — the star whistleblower from the 60 Minutes report that sparked the crackdown on the live export trade.
Mazher claims his friend told him Australian animal activist groups would pay up to $20,000 for footage of animals suffering. And he was excited about a deal the pair had to split the cash 50/50.
Initially, Ullah ran the contact with animal rights groups.
Then, Mazher, wanting to get in on the action, created an email account using the identity of another deckhand, so as not to get in trouble from his employer, and made direct contact with White. It’s in these emails — which have been obtained by The Daily Telegraph — where Animals Australia is exposed for offering payments in return for vision and photographs of cruelty of animals on the live export vessels. In emails spanning more than a year, White offered Mazher thousands of dollars for footage that showed dead or suffering sheep.
“There is momentum here in Australia at the moment to phase out the live sheep trade,” she wrote in an email dated April 25, 2018.
“The key to achieving the next steps towards ending the trade will be showing that suffering still is occurring. Injured and sick sheep not being found/treated — pens still overcrowded, animals suffering heat stress (panting). Piles of dead etc.”
In an email sent on May 31, White said she would pay $US1000 a shipment plus a $500 “bonus” if what was filmed was valuable. This is, in my opinion, cash for cruelty.
Mazher says it was a sliding scale. If there was footage that the activist groups could use, he would be paid more. The only problem was, as hard as Mazher tried, he did not see the type of cruelty the groups wanted to see.
And he was looking for it. That’s why he emailed Lyn White offering to inflict cruelty on the animals. He claimed he wanted to see if this was how other footage had been obtained by ship-workers like himself.
So, Mazher offered to create suffering on the vessels and brazenly emailed White with his great idea.
But, even after these emails offering to turn off ventilation for animals, White continued to work with Mazher. This is extraordinary.
White — whose very mission is to protect the most vulnerable and abused animals in our society — continued to work with a whistleblower who had offered to switch off ventilation to make the sheep suffer; who thought it would be a “great idea” to be cruel to animals in order to achieve the greater aim of stopping the trade. Oh, and earning cash.
This is a devastating revelation for Animals Australia and their cause.
We also know now that whistleblower Fazal Ullah — who spoke out about the cruelty of live exports — had previously been disciplined by his employer for beating cattle with a stick on board. Last night, on my Sky show, Mazher fessed up to sending the emails offering to create suffering. It was his first interview. The first time he had shown his face or revealed his identity.
He is fearful for his life, saying it wouldn’t take more than a couple of hundred bucks to hire someone to wipe him out in Pakistan. He is afraid of animal activists, other whistleblowers and former workers. There is also anger towards him in Pakistan because his co-operation with animal activist groups caused mass firings of Pakistani seafarers by export companies.
He said in total he was paid $3600 by animal activist groups — equivalent to one year’s worth of his salary.
Bank transfer details show Mazher was given $US2000 from an account called Animals Australia Federation.
While he says he did not inflict any cruelty on animals, he readily admits that payments like this are an enormous incentive to be cruel.
Chair of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Water Resources, Liberal MP, Rick Wilson, describes payments from animal activists as an “inducement”.
“It’s an inducement or incentive for the whistleblower to have created the conditions that led to the distressing footage,” he said.
And he may be right.
Think how enticing the offer of a year’s salary is to a deckhand working on a vessel for nine months at a time, away from his family, friends, wife and children. All the while, caged-in, like the animals, on a stinking ship, filling troughs with water, feeding sheep and cattle and enduring the heat of the Middle East in summer.
The Department of Agriculture was supposed to have conducted a thorough investigation into this alarming situation but such was the thoroughness of their inquiry, they didn’t even bother to speak to Mazher.
“My concern is the department of agriculture has been completely captured by Animals Australia,” Mr Wilson told me.
There needs to be a fresh inquiry into this practice. As much as live export companies are under scrutiny for their treatment of sheep and cattle, animal activist groups also need to be held accountable for their tactics. It is naive to think offers of cash would not risk enticing lowly-paid deckhands to inflict cruelty on animals; the very situation activists supposedly want to avoid.