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solonavi 15 May 2008 Campaign, Endangered & Extinction, Video 340 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

Greenpeace

Stake outs, testimony from informers, hidden cameras and tailing trucks full of stolen goods – it reads like a Hollywood movie, but it was an every day experience for Greenpeace activists in Japan, who have spent four months cracking open a major conspiracy of corruption at the heart of Japan’s government-backed, sham scientific whaling operation.

Today we displayed a cardboard box filled with the best cuts of whale meat, smuggled ashore by the crew of the Japanese whaling factory ship, Nisshin Maru, for illegal trade and personal gain, at the Japanese taxpayer’s expense. The box, along with videotaped testimony and other evidence, suggest widespread embezzelment of whale meat has been occuring for decades under the noses of the public officials who run the whaling programme, and are allowing it to happen.

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The four-month Greenpeace investigation employed undercover tactics to reveal dramatic evidence of an embezzlement ring involving crewmembers on board the Nisshin Maru. Informers who spoke to the activists claim that senior crew and officials from Kyodo Senpaku turned a blind eye to the whale meat theft, allowing it to continue for decades. One informer associated with Kyodo Senpaku told Greenpeace that officials from the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) – the agency that carries out the so-called “scientific research” work on board the Nisshin Maru – are most likely aware of the thefts as well.

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Working from information given by former and current Kyodo Senpaku employees, the Greenpeace investigators secretly documented the offloading of smuggled whale meat into a special truck, while Kyodo Senpaku officials and crew members stood by, following the Nisshin Maru’s return earlier this year, on April 15th. Greenpeace then tracked the consignment from the ship to a depot in Tokyo.

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The ongoing Japanese government-backed scientific whaling programme, which takes place in the internationally-recognised Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, has been continually mired in controversy, lies and scandal, bringing Japan into international disrepute. This latest scandal begs the question of just who profits from a whaling programme which generates no useful science, and is commercially unsustainable.

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“The whaling programme in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is funded by the Japanese taxpayers and they have a right to know who is profiting from their money,” commented Sato. “The Japanese whaling programme has already been shamed internationally for its lack of scientific credibility, embarrassed by the generation of vast stockpile of whale meat few want to eat and is now embroiled in a scandal at home for being corrupt. It is time for the whaling programme to be stopped and public money spent on something more honourable.” Sato concluded.

Greenpeace Japan whale campaign coordinator Junichi Sato weighs 23.5 kilograms of whale meat stolen by crewmembers of the Nisshin Maru whaling ship. The contents of the box were listed as “cardboard.”