Action for our Planet considering legal action over defamatory article

Jan. 19, 2011 - PRLog -- Action for our Planet's name has been featured on a handful of websites belonging to alternative news network, Independent Media Centre (Indymedia).

The article written by a lone member of Indymedia, puts forward the notion that Action for our Planet is wanted for criminal activities along with a large number of other organisations. While Action for our Planet will not speak on behalf of any other organisation featured on the list, it is important to emphasise that Action for our Planet is a completely peaceful organisation dedicated to providing information on world issues and offering peaceful, legal ways to take action.

The action encouraged by AFOP includes: petitioning, handing out leaflets and encouraging others to become more compassionate. There is absolutely no justification and reason for the author of the defamatory article to list AFOP as a criminal organisation. In the last few days prior to the 19th of January, AFOP submitted several blog posts to Indymedia, these blog posts are also available on the Action for our Planet Blog. In these blog posts, Action for our Planet criticised several governments including the Japanese, American and Tunisian governments. AFOP can only imagine that the author of the article concerned, does not realise free speech and criticism of government is legal. Nowhere in these blog posts is written anything illegal as the author of the defamatory article may believe. Similarly, nowhere on the Action for our Planet website or in the organisation as a whole is featured anything illegal.

AFOP has since contacted Indymedia requesting that they remove all posts by the author of the article that suggested AFOP is a 'subversive' or 'criminal' group along with many other organisations. In the interest of avoiding any future troubles, Action for our Planet has further requested that Indymedia remove all blog posts written by AFOP and Action for our Planet has taken the decision not to publish any more blog posts on Indymedia. This decision is based on the fact that Action for our Planet does not want any future troubles to arise from lone Indymedia members.

Action for our Planet's spokesperson, Oli Dillon Squire said ''We hope all of the defamatory articles featuring the name of our organisation will be taken down immediately. We are considering legal action for defamation of character against the specific individual who wrote and published the article on Indymedia sites''.

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Action for our Planet (AFOP) is a website providing people with information on various world issues including animal exploitation, human rights, climate change, corruption and political oppression.