After 26 days in custody, Greenpeace Japan anti-whaling activists Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki have been released on bail and are back home with their families.
There was significant international outcry over the arrests, and around the world upwards of 250,000 people wrote letters to the Japanese Prime Minister and Foreign Minister calling for Junichi and Toru’s release.
Here in New Zealand, Greenpeace activists delivered a crate containing 1,700 letters from New Zealanders to the Japanese Embassy in Wellington.
Only 10 per cent of bail applications are successful in Japan, so it is a relief that Junichi and Toru were part of this 10 per cent. Read more »
Junichi and Toru, our two activists who exposed the Japanese whale meat scandal and have been held in detention for the last three weeks, have been charged with theft and trespass. This is despite pressure from more than 30 international organisations, including Amnesty International, the Lawyers Network for Human Rights Observation, International Fund for Animal Welfare, InArticle 19, Transparency International, Oceana, Ubuntu, and Oxfam, and almost a quarter of a million emails to Prime Minister Fukuda.
For now, they’re still in custody - stay tuned for updates on this. Read more »
According to some juicy information received by our team in Japan, the crew members of the Nisshin Maru and the rest of the whaling fleet, who would by now have already left port for the annual North Pacific whale hunt, have been ordered to stay at home. Bummer for them - but it gives the whales a reprieve, for now.
Stake outs, testimony from informers, hidden cameras and tailing trucks full of stolen goods - it reads like a Hollywood movie, but it was an every day experience for Greenpeace activists in Japan, who have spent four months cracking open a major conspiracy of corruption at the heart of Japan’s government-backed, sham scientific whaling operation.
Today we displayed a cardboard box filled with the best cuts of whale meat, smuggled ashore by the crew of the Japanese whaling factory ship, Nisshin Maru, for illegal trade and personal gain, at the Japanese taxpayer’s expense. The box, along with videotaped testimony and other evidence, suggest widespread embezzelment of whale meat has been occuring for decades under the noses of the public officials who run the whaling programme, and are allowing it to happen.
Bureaucrats ignore theft from taxpayers
Our activists delivered the evidence, including the whale meat, to the Public Prosecutor’s office in Tokyo, calling on it to make a full public enquiry into how deep the corruption runs with the whaling programme. We’re also calling for an end to the USD$4.7 million taxpayer subsidies for the programme, and for the license of the company operating the whale hunt, Kyodo Senpaku, to be withdrawn.
The four-month Greenpeace investigation employed undercover tactics to reveal dramatic evidence of an embezzlement ring involving crewmembers on board the Nisshin Maru. Informers who spoke to the activists claim that senior crew and officials from Kyodo Senpaku turned a blind eye to the whale meat theft, allowing it to continue for decades. One informer associated with Kyodo Senpaku told Greenpeace that officials from the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) - the agency that carries out the so-called “scientific research” work on board the Nisshin Maru - are most likely aware of the thefts as well.
Japan’s factory whaling ship, the Nisshin Maru was “welcomed” into Tokyo earlier today, by Junichi and our team from Greenpeace Japan, along with the word “failed” to accompany the ubiquitous and Orwellian “RESEARCH” painted on its hull.
During its five months at sea, the Nisshin Maruwas responsible for taking 551 minke whales from the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary - far less than the 1035 whales planned, but more than a hundred than were killed three years ago. Our ship, the Esperanza, shutdown Japan’s entire whaling operation for 15 days, during a 4300-mile chase of the Nisshin Maru across the Southern Ocean. The whalers are blaming the protestors (that’d be us then) for missing their target. Read more »
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Welcome to the GPNZ blog! Here we'll tell tales, cast nasturciums, talk in parables and offer opinions on stuff that it is, at least in some way related, to the work we do.
