Whaling on Trial: Japan's stolen whale meat scandal and the trial of the Tokyo Two

In early 2010, two Greenpeace activists will go on trial in Japan in an unprecedented court case - one that court papers will register simply as a case of theft and trespass but which, over the course of the past two years, has become so much more. Corrupt government practices, Japan’s adherence to international law, freedom of speech and the right of individual protest and the commercial killing of thousands of whales are all under the spotlight. Before the verdict has even been rendered, the United Nations has already ruled that, in the defendants' attempts to expose a scandal in the public interest, their human rights have been breached by the Japanese government.