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Greenpeace activists hold a vigil outside the Japanese Embassy in Canberra. The white lanterns bear a message to the Japanese Government.
Enlarge imageOur vigil lasted over five hours, starting in the afternoon. Greenpeace activists carried towering Japanese Daimyo flags bearing the messages “Free the Tokyo Two” and “Put Whaling on Trial” in Japanese and English.
Activists also held white lanterns, which traditionally mark someone's passing away. Our lanterns bore the Japanese characters for “Truth” and “Justice”, both of which have been sacrificed in the investigations relating to the scandal. As dusk fell, the lanterns glowed a quiet but powerful message for the ambassador, embassy staff and, ultimately, the Japanese Government.
Read about non-violent direct action
The Tokyo Two and the whale meat scandal
The two activists, Junichi and Toru, are currently under strict bail conditions and are preparing for their trial in June 2009. They were arrested in June last year, after they exposed the corruption at the heart of Japan’s whaling program, and intercepted stolen whale meat from the Japanese Whaling vessel Nishin Maru.“The ‘Whale Meat Scandal’ exposed by Greenpeace last year is critical evidence of the corruption at the heart of Japan’s wasteful lethal whaling program,” says Reece Turner, Greenpeace Australia Whales Campaigner.
Instead of the charges of corruption being investigated, Japanese authorities detained the activists in what is clearly a politically motivated act. They were first detained without charge for 26 days, and then kept under strict bail conditions. The Greenpeace office in Japan was raided, severely disrupting the organisations ability to continue work.
Reece says the Rudd Government should lead the international effort against Southern Ocean whaling by calling for an independent investigation by the International Whaling Commission into the whale meat embezzlement.
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Report: Read Greenpeace's investigation into the whale meat scandal
Global calls for truth on Japan’s whaling program
The vigil was one of a number of coordinated protests staged by Greenpeace at Japanese embassies around the world to highlight global opposition to whaling in the Southern Ocean and to call upon justice for the Tokyo Two.
In Japan, Executive Directors of Greenpeace, together with international human rights lawyer Richard Harvey, called for full disclosure of information about Japan’s whaling program. Details about the program have been heavily censored by authorities despite whaling being propped up by taxpayers’ funds. In 2008, Greenpeace Japan filed a “Freedom of Information” request for whale meat sales. Files have recently been returned with an absurd amount of censored text, leaving pages with more black marks than writing.
“The blacked out document represents the level of darkness surrounding the government funded whaling program,” says Jun Hoshikawa, As the Executive Director of Greenpeace Japan Jun Hoshikawa.
Japan currently subsidises the so-called “scientific” whaling expeditions in the Southern Ocean to the tune of ¥500 million (over AU$7 million). Their government insists on continuing with this unprofitable enterprise at the expense of taxpayers’ money, at a time of severe domestic and global financial crisis.
