Japan to Free Anti-Whaling Activists
Text of report in English by Japan’s largest news agency Kyodo
Tokyo, Jan. 16 Kyodo – Japan’s Fisheries Agency said Wednesday it has decided to release two anti-whaling activists who have been detained after they boarded one of Japanese whaling vessels operating in the Antarctic Ocean.
The agency also said it will temporarily suspend the whaling operations until the activists are freed so that the Japanese fleet will not meet resistance again.
The agency said it has called on the anti-whaling group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, to take back its activists.
Sea Shepherd so far has never responded possibly because it wants to vilify Japan for having taken the two hostage or it is trying to bar the Japanese whalers from resuming their work, an agency official said.
The agency now intends to notify the Australian government that it is releasing the activists.
After consulting with the relevant ministries and agencies including the Foreign Ministry, the agency has decided to free the activists – a 35-year-old British citizen and a 28-year-old Australian – after concluding that they boarded a Japanese vessel, named the Yushin Maru No 2, in order to hand a letter of protest and that they did not intend to harm the boat.
The agency also admitted that the Japanese crew temporarily tied up the activists while they were onboard as Sea Shepherd has accused them of doing.
“It is quite deplorable to use violent tactics to sabotage legal research activities based on the international whaling convention,” an agency official said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura also said the same day, “The Japanese government strongly condemns the dangerous act (of the anti-whaling) campaigners.”
According to Machimura, the Sea Shepherd members threw a bottle containing liquid that was “not poisonous, but had a strong foul odour,” into the Japanese boat and tried to stop it by using a rope on its propeller.
In regard to the Australian Federal Court ruling handed down Tuesday to call on the Japanese to halt their whaling operations, Machimura flatly dismissed it, calling it “unacceptable.”
The ruling ordered Japan to halt whaling in the “whale sanctuary” set up by Australia along the coasts of Antarctica, but the top Japanese government spokesman said, “The international consensus is that no country has territorial jurisdiction over Antarctica.”
“The ruling will have no impact on (the Japanese whaling fleet’s) legal activities in the high seas,” he added.
Commercial whaling was banned by the International Whaling Commission in 1986. But the whaling convention allows Japan to kill the mammals so long as it is for scientific purposes.
Sea Shepherd maintains that what Japan is doing is illegal and contravenes global treaties such as the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species. Japan claims that the populations of certain whale species have recovered sufficiently to warrant whaling.
The Japanese plan to kill 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales in its quota during this year’s three-month season.
Originally published by Kyodo News Service, Tokyo, in English 0623 16 Jan 08.
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