Greenpeace actions save whales

It's almost seven days since our ship, the Esperanza, found the whalers. Since then the whaling factory ship, Nisshin Maru, has continued to run and the Esperanza has continued to pursue. Greenpeace actions have prevented whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary for seven days and certainly saved whales

As long as the Japanese whalers run, they cannot hunt whales. On Tuesday the Nisshin Maru changed course and now appears to be heading back toward the whaling ground. If they begin whaling we will take non-violent direct action to stop them.

Non-violent direct action is one of Greenpeace's cornerstone principles and has been very successful in our earliest campaigns.

The battle to stop whaling began for Greenpeace in Australia in 1977, when a small group of people in Albany, Western Australia, were inspired to take non-violent direct action to stop whaling. In those days Australia was still whaling. The Greenpeace banner was hoisted on Australian soil for the first time, and people put their bodies on the line between the whalers and the whales - standing between what was right and what was wrong.

Our peaceful campaign was successful, and the Australian Government banned whaling in 1979. Since then the focus of our campaign has now shifted to the countries that continue to whale – Iceland, Norway and Japan.

Throughout our whales campaign our commitment to non-violent direct action has remained strong.

Our peaceful actions are effective. The Japanese delegation at the International Whaling Commission reported that in the summer of 2005/06 we interrupted and stopped whaling operations 26 times, saving 82 whales as we pursued the whaling fleet for over 29 days.

In addition to our non-violent direct action in the Southern Ocean, Greenpeace Japan is running a public, media and political campaign to mobilise Japanese people to tell their government that whaling must end. Therefore our non-violent direct action is designed to defend the whales, not attack the whalers. This is key to empowering the two thirds of Japanese people who do not support whaling on the high seas to take action. Perceived aggression towards the whalers will not help our cause, and that is why we position ourselves between the whales and whalers rather than board their vessels.

Greenpeace believes that using violent tactics to defend whales, no matter how strongly one may feel about it, will not help build the wave of opposition that’s required to call for an end to whaling in Japan by Japanese people.

In the long-term, non-violence will succeed.

Change is happening – with your support, our campaign is working.

By Rob Nicoll, whales campaigner, GPAP