Whales campaigner Sara Holden explains:
Only for a Greenpeace campaign could you gather together an archbishop, a rock star, a TV detective-turned-game show host, TWO Nobel peace prize winners, a movie heart throb, a heavy metal band, BAFTA and Oscar winning actresses and the captain of a space ship.
If you were planning fantasy dinner party, it would be a good start. But it might be hard to get a table big enough to add the additional Supreme Court advocates, politicians, lawyers and quarter of a million people who are also standing up for the very same cause.
On Monday, Greenpeace anti whaling campaigners Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki will go on trial in Japan. They are putting their futures on the line in order to expose corruption in the Japanese whaling programme, defend all of our rights to protest injustice and environmental threats.
But with all that support behind them, they are not going into court alone. Their case has gone global. You could even say it has gone galactic. Having William Shatner write a letter of support for the Tokyo Two campaign gives license to crack lots of bad jokes about this case boldly going where no case has gone before – but it is actually true!
For the first time in Japanese judicial history a landmark opinion by a division of the United Nations Human Rights Council has declared that Junichi and Toru’s human rights were breached by the authorities.
Not surprising then, that Junichi and Toru’s case had also already got the attention of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Betty Williams – Nobel Peace prize winners. As to the rest of this eclectic group of celebrity supporters – Benicio Del Toro, Emma Thompson, Thandie Newton, Edd Byrnes as well as rock musicians Bryan Adams (pictured above) and The Scorpions. Admit it – wouldn’t you love to see all of these people in the same room together… The Scorpions and Desmond Tutu – mindboggling!
Our thanks to all of you – famous or otherwise – for being in the same room as Junichi and Toru. You can keep supporting them by joining a pledge to the Japanese Government.
Monday is d-day for the start of their trial and the team at the courthouse will tweet the progress (tweets are in English and Japanese).
In addition to taking action and sending it to your friends — you can also help to gather support to make sure whaling goes on trial by publicly thanking the celebrities who have signed the open letter. By doing this – their thousands of fans might be encouraged to join us too.
You can submit the following suggested message on their Facebook fan page or send it to them on Twitter – linking to our Tokyo Two Pledge.
"Thanks for supporting the Greenpeace activists – and helping to put whaling on trial http://bit.ly/WhalePledge"
Bryan Adams on Facebook
Bryan Adams on Twitter
William Shatner on Facebook
William Shatner of Twitter
Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Facebook
The Scorpions on Facebook
The Scorpions on MySpace
Thandie Newton on Facebook
Thandie Newton’s IMDB page (you can leave a thank you note in the message board at the bottom).
Images © Greenpeace
