Greenpeace condemns departure of Japanese whaling
fleet
Tokyo, 1 December 2015 - Greenpeace calls on the
government of Japan to cancel the whaling fleet heading to
the Southern Ocean under the guise of “research
whaling”, and condemned the expedition as both unnecessary
and in violation of the findings of the International Court
of Justice (ICJ). The Japanese government released a
statement announcing the fleet would depart for the
Antarctic today.
“It is completely unacceptable for
the Japanese government to ignore the International Court of
Justice. It’s time to cut the charade. This is not
‘scientific research', this is straight up commercial
whaling, ” said Junichi Sato, Executive Director of
Greenpeace Japan.
“In 2014 the fleet was able to
conduct scientific research that didn’t cause any whales
to be killed, and there is no reason that this should not be
the case this year. Greenpeace Japan and 15 other Japanese
NGOs are demanding that the government of Japan reverse this
decision, and abide by international law.”
In 2014,
the ICJ ruled that Japan’s research whaling program was
not, in fact, designed for scientific research and refused
the government a permit to go ahead. Japan, however,
proposed a new program called “NEWREP-A” which will
target 3,996 minke whales over next 12 years.
In May
2015, the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling
Commission stated that the new programme “contained
insufficient information” and demanded that the Japanese
government provide more information to prove the new
programme is serving scientific purposes.
However, in
October the Japanese government announced to the United
Nations that they will not accept the jurisdiction of the
ICJ, and said that that they will not accept any finding or
lawsuit pertaining to any dispute over use of ocean
resources. This is a significant reversal of the Japanese
government’s previous position, which had accepted and
endorsed the need to abide by international law and legal
findings.
The link to the NGO join statement can
be found found here: http://www.greenpeace.org/japan/Global/japan/pdf/20151130-whale-joint-statement.pdf
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