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Stand Firm Against Fanatics
Extremists who traffic in bullying, threats and violence have received a court injunction against their latest anti-corporate intimidation campaign.
Kook radicals claiming to support animal rights have been "sending letters to individuals who have invested in one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies...." The company was targeted because they have contracts with a testing firm that uses animals in its evaluation work. The threatening letters to small investors in the U.K., purportedly from the Campaign Against Huntingdon Life Sciences, warn shareholders that "should you choose not to sell your shares within the next 14 days, your details will be publicised and within weeks a website will be hosted with all remaining shareholders listed." To the pharmaceutical company's credit, they have refused to break ties with the testing company. The British High Court has issued an emergency injunction against the group sending out any additional letters and against publishing any personnel information about the investors. The BBC reports that "stockbroker groups have denounced the campaign as ‘terrorism', while medical researchers have defended animal testing as a ‘small but vital' part of medical research which had saved millions of lives." The harassment seems to have triggered fallout in the United States. As the BBC explained, the "intimidation campaign led to Huntingdon being delisted from the London Stock Exchange, and its US parent company had its listing on the New York Stock Exchange postponed last autumn." Winston is exquisitely sensitive to animal rights. He is also very well aware of the many lives which have been saved through medical research conducted on animals. Above all he knows that the tactics of the anti-Huntingdon fanatics are absolutely unacceptable. No individual, company, government, or self-regulatory organization should allow their decisions to be influenced by such actions.
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