Japan deported a New Zealand activist convicted of assault and obstruction after he attempted to stop the annual Japanese whale hunt.
Peter Bethune, 45, who clambered aboard a Japanese whaler in the middle of the Antarctic Ocean in February, was detained aboard the ship and arrested when it returned to Japan. Earlier this week, a Tokyo court sentenced the former member of conservation group Sea Shepherd to two years in prison, but suspended the sentence.
On Friday evening, Bethune was escorted by immigration officers onto an Air New Zealand flight bound for Auckland.
Japan each year hunts hundreds of mostly minke whales — which are not an endangered species — in Antarctic waters. US-based Sea Shepherd has been actively protesting Japan’s whaling trips for years, often scuffling with whalers at sea.
Japan conducts whale hunts in the region as part of a research program, an allowed exception to an international whaling ban, but Sea Shepherd and other critics say it is a cover for commercial whaling, noting nearly all the meat ends up in restaurants.
Bethune was convicted of several offenses, including assault for throwing bottles of rancid butter at whaling ships, trespassing, vandalism and possession of a knife. He slashed a protective net around the Shonan Maru 2 with a knife to board the ship from a Jet Ski.
In a tearful closing statement at his trial in June, Bethune apologized for the trouble and said he never intended to hurt anyone.
During earlier trial sessions, Bethune said he just wanted to confront the Japanese ship’s captain and hand him a US$3 million bill for the destruction of the Ady Gil, a Sea Shepherd vessel that sank when the two boats collided in January.
Sea Shepherd announced during the trial it would not let Bethune participate in further protests, but said on Thursday that was a tactic to help him avoid prison time and he’s free to rejoin.
Japan, Norway and Iceland hunt whales under exceptions to a 1986 moratorium by the International Whaling Commission. Japan’s whaling program involves large-scale expeditions to the Antarctic Ocean, while other whaling countries mostly stay along their own coasts.
Confrontations between Sea Shepherd boats and Japanese vessels have at times turned violent. Activists try to obstruct whaling ships by cutting them off, dangling ropes in the water to snarl their propellers, or throwing containers of rancid butter. The whalers have responded with water canons and sonic weapons to disorient the environmentalists.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
RSS