Archive for the ‘Japan’ Category
Saturday, May 1st, 2010
Lenore Taylor, 1/5/10
The government has decided to press ahead with legal action in the International Court of Justice to stop Japan’s ”scientific” whale hunt. Federal cabinet discussed the issue in Sydney on Thursday, a day after the Environment Protection Minister, Peter Garrett, rejected a ”compromise deal” from the International Whaling Commission to set long-term whale-kill quotas for Japan, Norway and Iceland and proposed instead a five-year phase-out plan for whaling in the Southern Ocean. Sources said the government decided to make good on its election promise in 2007 to take Japan to court.
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Tags: Australia, Environment, Japan, Trade
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Saturday, May 1st, 2010
Peter Alford; 1/5/10
Anti-whaling activist and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society leader Paul Watson has challenged the Australian government to say whether it will comply with a Japanese warrant for his arrest. “If I go back and the Australians want to arrest me and put me into an extradition trial for the Japanese, then we’ll see what happens,” he said from New York. Mr Watson was unconcerned about a Japan Coast Guard request for him to be put on an Interpol wanted list: “Interpol does not act on politically motivated charges.” But he said Australian and New Zealand authorities also had responsibility to interview the skipper of the whaling patrol boat Shonan Maru 2 about a Southern Ocean collision in January that resulted in the destruction of Sea Shepherd’s power boat. Although Ady Gil was a New Zealand-registered vessel, Mr Watson claimed the Japanese had refused to make the skipper available to foreign investigators.
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Tags: Australia, Environment, Japan, Pacific, Trade
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Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Joe Kelly; 29/4/10
Australian diplomacy will be tested as the Rudd government scrambles to muster support for a fresh push to end so-called scientific whaling in the Southern Ocean. Environment Protection Minister Peter Garrett has rejected a compromise plan by the International Whaling Commission that would allow some whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. IWC chairman Cristian Maquieira last week announced the proposal for limited whaling in the sanctuary and off the coast of Japan in an attempt to reach a compromise on the whale conservation issue. But Mr Garrett said the proposal was unacceptable and would set back whale conservation by decades.
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Tags: Australia, Environment, Japan, Pacific
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Saturday, April 24th, 2010
Peter Alford & Dennis Shanahan; 24/4/10
Japanese whaling would continue in Antarctic waters for the next decade – with impunity from Kevin Rudd’s threatened legal action – under a proposal by the International Whaling Commission chairman. The proposal allows Japan to replace its controversial “scientific whaling” program with IWC quotas for an annual Southern Ocean kill of 410 whales in each of the next five years and 205 whales annually from 2015-2020. If approved by 75 per cent of members at June’s IWC meeting, chairman Cristian Maquieira’s proposal would undercut the 24-year worldwide ban on commercial whaling but resolve a bitter deadlock over continued hunting by Japan, Norway and Iceland. The commission’s 88 member countries have 60 days to negotiate further compromise before the Morocco meeting.
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Tags: Australia, Environment, Japan, Pacific
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Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
14/4/10
Scientists say they have found clear proof that meat from whales captured under Japan’s whaling programme is being sold in US and Korean eateries. The researchers say they used genetic fingerprinting to identify meat taken from a Los Angeles restaurant as coming from a sei whale sold in Japan. They say the discovery proves that an illegal trade in protected species still exists. Whale meat was also allegedly found at an unnamed Seoul sushi restaurant. Commercial whaling has been frozen by an international moratorium since 1986.
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Tags: Asia, Australia, Environment, Japanese, Trade
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Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
3/4/10
The prospect of a 15-year jail term facing anti-whaling activist Pete Bethune was unjust, Greens leader Bob Brown said yesterday. The New Zealander, in custody in Tokyo after illegally boarding a Japanese whaling vessel, the Shonan Maru No 2, was initially charged with trespass after his arrest last month. But the Japan Coast Guard has laid four more charges of assault, illegal possession of a knife, destruction of property and obstruction of business. Senator Brown said the Japanese whalers should be facing charges under Australian law for endangering lives. “It is absolutely unjust that Captain Pete Bethune is facing up to 15 years in prison in Japan,” he said. The Greens leader said the Australian Federal Police were investigating an official complaint by the Sea Shepherd group over the ramming and sinking of the Ady Gil.
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Tags: Australia, Environment, Japam, NZ, Pacific
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Thursday, April 1st, 2010
Brigid Glanville; 1/4/10
The Federal Government says it is very concerned by New Zealand’s compromise proposal with Japan to allow a set number of whales to be killed. New Zealand has agreed to a plan that would give whaling countries the right to kill 1,500 whales a year, and its whaling commissioner plans to put forward the proposal at international talks in June. But Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett says Australia will strongly argue its case for a blanket ban on hunting.
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Tags: Australia, Environment, Japan, NZ, Pacific
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Monday, March 15th, 2010
Dennis Shanahan; 15/3/10
Diplomatic relations between Australia and Japan are spreading beyond the emotional issue of whale hunting in the Antarctic, as Japanese resentment grows at Kevin Rudd’s decision not to attend a nuclear disarmament meeting in Washington next month. Tokyo’s anger over the Rudd government’s renewed threat to take it to the International Court of Justice over whaling has fuelled disappointment at the Prime Minister’s shifting emphasis on nuclear non-proliferation. Last week, senior Japanese officials circulated an assessment of Japan-Australia relations after the first visit of new Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, which praised progress on trade, defence, disaster relief and nuclear non-proliferation. But the assessment contained blunt views about the Australian government’s threat to take Japan to the ICJ and the refusal to cite the legal grounds for any action outside the International Whaling Commission talks. It also stressed the importance of continuing discussions on the nuclear issue.
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Tags: Arms, Australia, Japan, Nuclear, UN, USA
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Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Peter Alford; 13/3/10
After years of fruitless efforts to penetrate the facade of Japan’s scientific whaling, Greenpeace in January 2008 stumbled across a rare opportunity: a whistleblower. An investigation by Greenpeace Japan’s Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, based on the whistleblower’s tip-offs, produced sensational allegations of corruption, waste and official misbehaviour in the whaling program. Japanese taxpayers keep scientific whaling afloat: last year, Y=5.1 billion (about $60 million) of the Institute of Cetacean Research’s Y=13.9 trillion operating expenses were met by interest-free public loans, Y=538m came as direct subsidy and another Y=404m as public research fees. The rest came from selling the meat of the whales killed by the fleet, the proceeds of a publicly funded activity. The public was being cheated, Greenpeace argued. Sato and Suzuki, however, ended up in the dock.
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Tags: Australia, Environment, Japan, Pacific
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Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Peter Alfordl; 10/3/10
Japanese governments lied to their people for more than 30 years about a “tacit” secret agreement allowing nuclear-armed US vessels to use their ports, a special Foreign Ministry panel reported yesterday. The tacit agreement, an undisclosed adjunct to the 1960 revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty, allowed breaches of Japan’s Three Non-Nuclear Principles until 1991 when Washington officially halted deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on warships. Successive conservative governments “offered dishonest explanations, including lies from beginning to end”, the panel convened by Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada reported yesterday. “This attitude should not have been allowed under the principle of democracy,” Mr Okada said. He said it could not be discounted that nuclear weapons passed through Japan during that period – many experts believe it happened frequently – but that current security arrangements between the two countries were unaffected.
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Tags: Arms, Environment, Japan
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Saturday, March 6th, 2010
Dennis Shanahan & Peter Alford; 6/3/10
The federal government risks a major diplomatic dispute by taking Japan to the International Court of Justice over whaling, Japanese officials have warned. But Kevin Rudd, aware of mounting Japanese antagonism, repeated his threat yesterday. “If necessary, we’ll take it to the ICJ before the next whaling season commences,” the Prime Minister said in an interview with The Weekend Australian. “I don’t think I can be plainer than that.” The likelihood of an Australia-Japan showdown escalated as key International Whaling Commission nations failed yesterday to agree on a compromise that would have allowed hunting to continue in the Antarctic for 10 years. The Florida meeting underlined that Australia’s hardline position was becoming isolated, heading into the critical IWC annual meeting in June.
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Tags: Australia, Envionment, Japan, Pacific, Trade
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Friday, March 5th, 2010
Peter Alford, 5/3/10
Japanese hopes of keeping open a prized fishery suffered a severe blow yesterday when the US announced it would vote for a total ban on international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna. Imports from the East Atlantic and Mediterranean, which could be completely shut down by the threatened ban, would reduce Japan’s sources of bluefin tuna by about 20 per cent. US support not only raises the likelihood of the ban vote succeeding next week but means Japan will come under heavy pressure from its principal ally if, as threatened, it defies the embargo. The world’s most voracious seafood consumers, the Japanese eat bluefin tuna mainly as premium sushi and sashimi and take about 80 per cent of the world supply.
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Tags: Australia, Environment, Trade
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Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
3/3/10
Japan will push for a resumption of commercial whaling, the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu said. “To gain the right to resume commercial whaling, what and how much can we give?” he told reporters in Tokyo today before the closed-door talks of an International Whaling Commission in Florida. “We will continue our patient negotiations.” In 1986, the IWC slapped a moratorium on commercial whaling, but Japan uses a loophole that allows lethal “scientific research” for its annual Antarctic hunts, while Norway and Iceland defy the ban entirely. The three nations have since killed more than 30,000 whales.
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Tags: Australia, Environment, Japan, Pacific
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Friday, February 26th, 2010
Peter Alford; 26/2/10
The Japanese government has accepted in principle a plan for Antarctic whaling to continue at reduced levels under International Whaling Commission supervision. Japan’s Antarctic whaling operations could be legitimised by the IWC by late June, unless Australia can rally enough support from other members to block the controversial compromise plan. IWC chairman Cristian Maquieira’s proposal is a blow to Australian hopes of halting all southern whaling and, if approved by the commission’s annual meeting, would also upset Kevin Rudd’s threat to take Japan to the International Court of Justice. Japan Fisheries Agency counsellor Joji Morishita described the Maquieira plan as “a provisional ceasefire”, suspending more than 20 years of disputes between Japan and its anti-whaling opponents. “It would signify big progress as (disputing) parties would search for the midway point by conceding ground to each other,” he said.
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Tags: Australia, Japan, Pacific, Trade
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Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
23/2/10
The New Zealand government says taking legal action against Japanese whaling could tie up the issue for years in the courts. New Zealand Prime Minister John Keys and Foreign Minister Murray McCully said they supported a diplomatic solution over Australia’s threat to take Japan to the International Court of Justice. ”Diplomacy gets you a quick solution, going head-to-head means this thing is tied up for ages in the ICJ. It could take years,” Mr McCully said. Mr McCully’s spokesman said the New Zealand government had seen the proposal Australia will soon put to the International Whaling Commission, but the November deadline for legal action ”hasn’t been discussed”.
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Tags: Australia, Environment, Japan, Pacific
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