Japan and the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd on Tuesday swapped angry words at the world whaling conference on the British Channel Island of Jersey over the hunting of cetaceans around Antarctica.
In a plenary session of the International Whaling Commission, Japanese delegation chief Kenji Kagawa blasted Sea Shepherd’s pursuit of Japanese whaling ships as “sabotage” and “violent and illegal acts.”
Showing video footage of high-sea confrontations, Kagawa called on Australia and the Netherlands, which let Sea Shepherd register its ships under their flags and dock in their ports, to block the campaigners.
The two countries should “take adequate measures to stop their actions and ensure that they do not start again,” Kagawa said.
However, Sea Shepherd skipper Paul Watson vowed to continue harassing Japanese whalers if they return to the Antarctic sanctuary later this year.
“We are trying to find out what Japan’s intentions are,” he said on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the commission, which oversees both the hunting and the protection of cetaceans.
“If they go back to the Southern Ocean, then we go back to the Southern Ocean,” Watson said.
“It doesn’t make any economic or political sense for them to go back,” he added, seated aboard the trimaran Brigitte Bardot, docked in Saint Helier.
The former French movie star and animal-rights activist contributed to the brand-new vessel, which was launched in May.
The commission has banned all types of commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, a vast area of sea surrounding the land of Antarctica.
Japan conducts whale hunting there for what it describes as “scientific research,” setting self-determined quotas averaging about 1,000 whales each year during the past five years.
The killing is permissible under the commission’s rules, but other nations and environmental groups condemn it as disguised commercial whaling.
In February, Japan recalled its Antarctic fleet a month ahead of schedule with only a fifth of its planned catch, citing interference from Sea Shepherd’s vessels.
The 89-nation commission, roughly evenly split between pro and anti-whaling nations, is meeting until today.
Watson said the hardship caused by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which left nearly 28,000 people dead or missing, would not cause him to soften his stance or change his tactics.
“If there were an earthquake in Colombia, would we be less hard on cocaine smugglers?” he asked. “The fact is, Japan’s whaling is illegal, so just because there is a natural disaster in Japan is no reason for us to stop opposing their illegal activities in the Southern Ocean.”
“Our objective right from the beginning was to sink the Japanese whaling fleet economically, to bankrupt them,” he added.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS