Japanese Whalers have no legal credibility

[Annces]

Japanese whalers all at sea in hunt for legal credibility

(editorial from The Age, Australia)

January 7, 2009

THE stormy waters of the Southern Ocean are dangerous territory, as the loss of a crewman on a Japanese whaler highlighted this week. Those extreme conditions can often inspire equally extreme responses from whalers and anti-whaling activists alike during their annual summer showdown over Japan's "scientific" whaling in the Antarctic whale sanctuary. But the Japanese whaling association's latest demands — that Australia and New Zealand should close their ports to Sea Shepherd's ship the Steve Irwin — are particularly over the top.

Until a few days ago, the Steve Irwin had been pursuing the whaling fleet for 2000 nautical miles, including through waters off the Australian Antarctic Territory. During that time, there were two brief clashes between the ships. As usual, both sides have given different accounts of those clashes. Such skirmishes have been going on for years, with protesters causing minor collisions and trying to disable Japanese vessels, while the whalers have blasted activists in small inflatable boats with high-powered water cannon in freezing conditions.

Any action from either side that endangers lives cannot be condoned. But the whalers' latest accusations that the Sea Shepherd crew have committed serious acts of "violence and intimidation" are yet to be backed up with evidence. As for their claim that any nation allowing the Sea Shepherd crew to dock will "facilitate their eco-terrorism at sea", it's an outlandish demand, ignoring a basic question of safety. The Steve Irwin needs to refuel; refusing it entry could leave its crew stranded at sea. For similar reasons, successive governments have resisted conservationists' calls to impose absolute bans on Japanese whaling ships entering Australian ports.

However, the call for Australia to enforce the law against protesters raises some important legal and environmental issues. While Japanese whalers now criticise Australia for not cracking down on the Sea Shepherd, they have shown little regard for the Australian legal system before now — in particular, when the Federal Court in Canberra last year ruled that Japanese whaler Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd was breaking the law by killing whales inside Australia's whale sanctuary and ordered it to stop.

It was a largely symbolic ruling because, as the judge conceded at the time, the Federal Court decision could be enforced in practice only if the company's ships came to Australia. Nevertheless, the court ruling reflected a legitimate concern about areas designated under Australian law and an international agreement as protected whale havens being turned into hunting grounds. The Japanese Government says its whalers have done nothing wrong, maintaining that its annual harpooning of whales is purely for "scientific" purposes. Japan argues that its "scientific" killing of whales is permitted by the International Whaling Commission, which banned all whaling worldwide in 1986 except for research purposes.

Technically that may be so. But the scale of its annual whale-killing program — around 7000 whales harpooned over the past 20 years, with the meat then made available for consumption back in Japan — makes a mockery of the spirit of the international agreement.

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