Australia will send a fisheries patrol ship to shadow Japan's whaling fleet near Antarctica and gather evidence for a possible court challenge to halt the yearly slaughter, the government said yesterday.
The icebreaker Oceanic Viking, used by Australia for customs and fisheries patrols, would leave for the Southern Ocean within days to follow the Japanese fleet, Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and Environment Minister Peter Garrett said.
But to avoid a high-seas incident and ease concern in Tokyo, heavy machine guns on the ship and sidearms used by boarding crews would be locked in storage below decks.
Low-level aerial patrols using an A319 Airbus commercial jet used by Australian Antarctic scientists would also follow and photograph the Japanese fleet, and Canberra had begun assembling a formal international diplomatic protest, or demarche, Smith said.
"We are dealing here with the slaughter of whales, not scientific research. That's our starting point and our end point," Smith partly on a promise of tougher anti-whaling action.
Japan takes more than 1,000 whales a year under a scientific program allowed under International Whaling Commission rules. This year, Japan plans to take some 50 humpbacks.
Critics, however, say the program is a shield for Japan to keep its whaling industry alive until it can overturn a 1986 ban on commercial whaling.
Japanese coastal communities have a long history of eating whale meat, and it was a major staple in the poverty-stricken years after World War II. The red meat, however, has plummeted in popularity as other types such as beef have become widely available in Japan.
Humpbacks were hunted nearly to extinction until the International Whaling Commission ordered their protection in 1966.
Japan has long resisted pressure to stop scientific whaling, insisting that whaling is a cherished cultural tradition.
"Japan's whaling is being conducted in line with international treaties and for the purpose of scientific research. We would like to win the understanding of others," a Japanese foreign ministry spokesman said in Tokyo.
Smith said photographic and video evidence gathered by the ship and aircraft would be used before any international legal tribunals to "make the point that what we are seeing is not scientific research, but the slaughter of whales".
Smith said an Australian special envoy would formally convey opposition to the hunt to Tokyo and a separate diplomatic protest by anti-whaling nations was being prepared.
Meanwhile, the US is pushing Japan to suspend its hunt of humpback whales, and the American ambassador to Japan said yesterday an agreement to stop it may have already been struck.
US Ambassador Thomas Schieffer said Japanese and US negotiators were working on an American demand that the hunt - part of a scientific research program allowed under international rules - be halted.
"I think we had an agreement this morning or last night between the US and Japan that humpback whales would not be harvested, I think, until maybe the international whaling conference in June," Schieffer said.
Because of the migration patterns of the whales, such a delay until the next annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission would mean "that it'll be awhile before they're at risk again," he said.
Source: China Daily/Agencies
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article