Tokyo Two - Greenpeace activists bullied by state
There’s nothing that makes my blood boil more than when people who stand up for human rights, animal rights and environmental issues are bullied by the state. The Japanese police arrested two Greenpeace activists who exposed a whale meat scandal involving a Government sponsored whaling programme.
Whale meat obtained by Greenpeace in Japan, during an investigation into large-scale theft of meat from the Japanese government-sponsored Southern Ocean whaling programme. A four month investigation by Greenpeace exposed claims by current and former crew that not only was thousands of dollars worth of meat stolen each year, but officials from the government's Institute of Cetacean Research and the fleet operators Kyodo Senpaku, know about the embezzlement, but ignore it, even though it is the Japanese tax payer which funds the expeditions.
©Greenpeace/Naomi Toyoda
Greenpeace Japan Whales campaign coordinator, Junichi Sato, holds up one of the pieces of whale meat obtained by Greenpeace during an investigation into large-scale theft of meat from the Japanese government-sponsored Southern Ocean whaling programme.
©Greenpeace/Naomi Toyoda
The two activists Junichi Sato, 31, and Toru Suzuki, 41, have been held in prison for 10 days and the Greenpeace offices in Tokyo ransacked by 40 police officers who seized computers, documents and mobiles – and their crime? What they were trying to do was show evidence of expensive cuts meat worth more than $10,000 were being illicitly removed by the crew of the whaling boat. The activists were not trying to get to the crew of the boat but at the bureaucrats who are involved in this scandal. The Japanese tax payer is funding this whaling programme to the tune of $5,000,000 a year.
I am joining other leading activists in Japan to call for their release together with almost 150,000 people who have offered their support - I hope you will encourage others to take action also, you can sign the petition on-line here
I remember a whaling conference in Kyoto, Japan, where stands were set up to offer the general public whale meat to imply that this is an integral part to traditional Japanese cuisine. The truth is eating whale meat was introduced after World War II when other meat and fish was difficult to come by – except for in a few port towns whose residents would eat whale meat very occasionally.
Whaling for “scientific purposes” is bad enough without wasting tax payer’s money and making the top bureaucrats richer and allowing them to feast on prime cuts of whale meat.
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