MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Japanese Fishing Agency officials admit taking “gifts” of whale meat
Japan alleges that whale hunting is for scientific purposes After more than two and half years of pressure by Greenpeace and the famous “Tokyo Two” trials, officials with the Japanese Fishing Agency publicly admitted Thursday that they received whale meat as “gifts” from private companies contracted by the government to slaughter whales, reports Greenpeace USA blog.
One of the officials, who according to press reports was one of several who received gifts of whale meat with an estimated values of 180 to 840 US dollars, even went so far as to bow in apology to the assembled media.
Junichi Sato, one of the defendants of the ‘Tokyo Two’ trial and now Executive and Program Director of Greenpeace Japan said of the victory that, “Greenpeace welcomes the Fisheries Agency of Japan's decision to discipline its officials who had been receiving free whale meat from the whaling operating company. However, FAJ only punished 5 officials while the corruption in the whaling program is much bigger and institutionalized. Greenpeace demands a third-party investigation on the whale meat scandal to reveal the true face of the whaling program.“
”…the recognition of the corruption in the whaling program by FAJ itself will strike the credibility of the program significantly,” Sato added.
This is a great victory for Greenpeace and people like you who support the work we’re doing to pressure the Japanese government to end its annual slaughter of whales in the Southern Oceans, said the Greenpeace USA blog.
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Read all commentsIn a country that evades culpability, it is a major blow to the Japanese whaling industry. As known by many, Japan has its own self-imposed whaling quota as agreed by IWC charter. However it ignores IWC law and hunts in south Antarctica sanctuary waters, far from its own seas where whaling population are basically non-existant due to over fishing.
Dec 24th, 2010 - 08:45 pm 0In an editorial written by Joji Morishita back in June of this year in the DAILY YOMIURI, Morishita says that “science and law should prevail in the whaling issue”. Well, Morishita is counsellor for the Japan Fisheries Agency - no doubt receiving whale meat as well.
“Also Morishita made the comment: ”The legal basis for the research whaling is also unequivocal. Article VIII of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling grants its signatories the right to assign themselves whaling quotas for research purposes. The quota is calculated, within a sustainable level, so as to obtain statistically and scientifically meaningful data. The purposes of the research, statistical bases for the sample size and the results of the research have been provided to the IWC and the data are publicly available at http://icrwhale.org/eng-index.htm--again, contrary to the public perception. Hundreds of scientific papers have been submitted to the IWC Scientific Committee and published in peer-reviewed scientific journals as the fruit of our research.“
With the above ”mumbo jumbo/written rhetoric, given the fact that we are documenting the corrupt Japanese whaling system, “sustainable” is whatever Japan considers they want and it is quite probable that whaling research has been doctored, even institutionalized.
All in the name of “research”.
Now who's secretaries will Japanese officials blame? Truthfully, only one Japanese official has come forward and publicly apologized.
Out of how many officials?
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