VAN NUYS : Rain Forest Group Pickets Auto Dealer

Chanting “Boycott Mitsubishi” and “Mitsubishi destroys rain forests,” a small but ardent group of environmental activists Tuesday resumed the local efforts of a nationwide boycott by picketing outside a Van Nuys auto dealership.

As part of World Rainforest Week, the demonstration by about a dozen members of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) outside Miller Mitsubishi on Van Nuys Boulevard began yet another round in the group’s efforts to pressure Mitsubishi Corp. to stop harvesting rain forests by boycotting auto sales.

“People need to know when they buy Mitsubishi products, some of the profits go to the Mitsubishi logging company, Mitsubishi Corp., which is destroying thousands of acres of rain forest and disrupting countless indigenous tribes,” said Atossa Soltani, Southern California director of RAN, which has been boycotting Mitsubishi products for about a year.

Soltani is among 40,000 RAN members in the United States and Canada who contend that Mitsubishi’s timber interests, the second largest in the world, are destroying the homelands of tribal cultures in Malaysia, Siberia, Canada and of the Cree Indians in the United States.

Mitsubishi Corp., which logs in Malaysian rain forests and trades with other logging companies, owns about 8% of Mitsubishi Motors Corp., which imports autos for sale to American dealerships such as Miller Mitsubishi, said Bill Shireman, an environmental consultant for Mitsubishi Motors.

The about 30 independent environmentalist groups that comprise RAN promised to halt their picketing of Mitsubishi auto dealerships for 90 days last spring when they convinced some of the 533 dealerships to write letters asking the company to change its logging practices.

But the picketing resumed this week because “the dealers haven’t done enough,” said Soltani. Of the 533 Mitsubishi auto dealerships asked to write letters, only about 50 dealers responded, she said. A second protest was held Tuesday in Santa Monica.

Miller Mitsubishi General Manger Thomas Croxton said the activists left him with the impression that the dealership would be left alone after he agreed to send a letter to Mitsubishi Corp.

“I’m very disappointed,” Croxton said. He said none of his dealership’s profits go to Mitsubishi Corp. and that the picketing is “hurting people who pay taxes and have families to feed and have no involvement in the rain forests.”