WASHINGTON —
Greenpeace today launched an anti-whaling advertising campaign featuring Sir Anthony Hopkins. The ads will begin airing Wednesday on MSNBC, Fox News and CNN Headline News in Washington, D.C. through Friday, to coincide with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to meet with President Bush in Washington. The environmental group is raising awareness about the ongoing senseless Japanese hunt of whales before the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting takes place in May in Anchorage.
“The U.S. government is chairing this year’s IWC meeting on U.S. soil. This provides an unprecedented opportunity for the U.S. to stand up and work to bring an end to commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary,” said Karen Sack, whales project leader with Greenpeace USA. “While Prime Minister Abe is here in Washington, leaders with whom he is meeting and the public need to know that they can join us in defending the whales and telling Japan that commercial whaling has no place in the 21st century.”
The Japanese government continues to hunt whales in an internationally agreed whale sanctuary under the guise of ‘scientific research.’ This year, they aimed to kill almost 1000 whales. Greenpeace sent its ship Esperanza to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in January to confront the whalers, but this was preempted by a deadly fire onboard the Japanese whaling fleet’s whale processing ship which threatened the pristine Antarctic environment and cut short the whaling season. Japan’s total take of whales from the Southern Ocean in 2006 was 505 minke whales and 3 endangered fin whales. Next year, they intend to add endangered humpback whales to their target list.
The IWC is the international body established in 1946 to regulate whaling. In 1982, the countries that are members of the IWC agreed to establish an indefinite moratorium on commercial whaling. The 2007 annual meeting of the IWC will take place on U.S. soil for the first time in 18 years and is being chaired by the U.S. The United States was key in championing the establishment of the whaling moratorium in the 1980s and must again show the world its commitment to protecting whales.
“Recent polling shows that 78 percent of the U.S. public oppose commercial whaling, and 69 percent of the Japanese public do not support their government’s annual hunt,” added Sack. “President Bush and Prime Minister Abe must work together to represent the interests of their citizens and stop this pointless hunt once and for all,” she concluded.
The ads, shot in February, feature Sir Anthony Hopkins. They were shot on super high-definition Dalsa cameras, and can be viewed at: http://www.greenpeace.org
For copies of the ad, please e-mail marcos.davalos@wdc.greenpeace.org
