Close up of Greenpeace whale campaign director Junichi Sato from Greenpeace Japan.
The activists, Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, provided written
testimony to the police in Aomori three weeks ago and offered to
make themselves available for further questioning at the police's
convenience. Despite this, yesterday 40 police raided the offices
of Greenpeace in Japan, seizing computers, telephones and
documents. At the same time Sato and Suzuki were arrested and
transferred to Aomori police station where they are being held. A
simple phone call would have been sufficient.
"This is not a police investigation, it is intimidation," said
Jun Hoshikawa, Executive Director of Greenpeace Japan. "Yet again
taxpayers must be asking themselves why their money is being
wasted, this time in an attempt to make an example out peaceful
protestors as the International Whaling Commission meets in Chile
and ahead of the G8 Summit to be held in Japan next month."
Greenpeace has launched an international on-line petition
directed at Japan's Prime Minster, Fukuda, appealing for him to
intervene to end this heavy handed charade and order the immediate
release innocent activists. They have committed no crime, other
than to challenge powerful forces within the whaling industry and
government and draw attention to the waste of hundreds of millions
of taxpayers Yen subsidizing a corrupt operation in the Southern
Ocean Whaling Sanctuary.
Meanwhile, Greenpeace has now been advised by the Tokyo District
Prosecutor Office that it has been unable to find evidence of the
embezzlement and that the investigation will end today.
"Clearly this has been a difficult investigation for the
Prosecutor's Office when the level of corruption runs so deep in
the whaling industry," said Hoshikawa. "However, key questions
remain unanswered -if Kyodo Senpaku was legally giving out whale
meat to the crew then why did they change their story several times
in almost as many days and why did the crew falsify the documents
when posting the meat home, claiming that the boxes contained
cardboard when in fact they where stuffed full of prime whale meat
cuts worth thousands of dollars?"
The meat from the annual so-called scientific hunt in the
Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is not officially made available to
the market, nor the price set, until after the International
Whaling Commission meeting each year, two and a half months after
the fleet's return to Japan.
The whaling programme costs the Japanese taxpayer 500 million
yen per year (around 4.7 million US dollars), despite being
internationally condemned. Last year the ICR was unable to repay a
1 billion yen tax subsidy from the government.
Other contacts: Bunny McDiarmid: Greenpeace NZ, in Auckland, 09 021 838 183
Keiko Shirokawa: Greenpeace Japan Media, in Tokyo: + 81 90 3470 7884
Mike Townsley, Greenpeace International, in Amsterdam: +31 621 296 918
Dave Walsh, Greenpeace International, at the IWC in Chile, +56 9 939 2952
Notes: In May, a four-month undercover investigation by Greenpeace in Japan revealed evidence of an embezzlement ring involving crew members on board the Nisshin Maru - the fleets factory ship onboard which the whales killed in the name of science are chopped and boxed for market. It provided evidence that crew were openly taking the best cuts of whale meat and smuggling them ashore disguised as personal luggage and then passing it on to the traders for illegal sale.
Greenpeace obtained one of the boxes, for which the paper work had been falsified claiming the contents as "cardboard" but it in fact contained 23.5 kgs of prime cut whale meat worth up to US$3,000. In total 47 suspicious boxes were identified by Greenpeace. That box was presented as evidence to the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office on May 8.
Informers told Greenpeace that senior crew and officials from Kyodo Senpaku - the company operating the fleet and the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) were turning a blind eye to the theft, allowing it to continue for decades.
The "Stolen Japanese Whale Meat Scandal" dossier is available to download in English and Japanese at:
http://www.greenpeace.org/whale-meat-scandal
The peaceful actions of the crew of the Greenpeace ship, Esperanza, in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary earlier this year stopped the entire whaling operation for more than two weeks. The factory ship, Nisshin Maru returned to port with half the planned quota of minke whales and no endangered fin whales. The whalers were forced to admit that previous claims that fin whale numbers were increasing was not proved by the expedition -in which so few fin whales were seen they were unable to catch any.