What do they do with the meat?
According to a poll of 1000 people published in The Age last week 94 per cent of Australians say the Federal Government is not doing enough to prevent Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean.
Of those, 75 per cent said they would refuse to buy Japanese products or services to pressure Japan to stop whaling. “Despite the incredible public relations expenditures by the Japanese whaling industry, despite pushing ‘experts’ to write editorials and be talking heads pushing the agenda of the whalers, the polls indicate that Australians are adamant in opposing the continued illegal activities of the Japanese whalers,” said Sea Shepherd Australian director Jeff Hansen.
On January 8 the aggressive response of whaling support boat, the Shonan Maru 2, to harassment by the Sea Shepherd Organisation ended in a boat being wrecked and a crewman with broken ribs. It could have been much worse. There were clear indications of laws of the sea being broken on both sides but potentially lethally in the case of the Shonan Maru 2.
After deliberately veering to starboard to slice the Ady Gil in half, the Japanese captain ignored Mayday calls. There was no radio contact. They would not have known if they had killed somebody by their aggressive action.
Acting PM Julia Gillard spoke for most Australians when she condemned the attack and called for restraint on both sides. But Japanese officials quickly told the acting ambassador to Japan that it was “not appropriate” to blame the whalers because the Ady Gil was “conducting the unlawful rampage”.
Recently Japanese trade expert Hiroshi Tataku warned that the spat with Australia over whaling has the potential to undermine long-standing free-trade talks (FTA), and that if the Rudd Government goes ahead with its threat to take legal action against Japan over whaling it could erupt like a bitter divorce.
“We have to solve this whaling issue and try to prevent this bi-lateral relationship becoming worse,” he said. He did not mention that negotiations over the FTA have been going for three years and are effectively stalled anyway.
Could the Japanese government issue a directive to Japanese business not to buy Australian raw materials? Would Japan’s industries be so swayed by the importance of whaling and be prepared to pay more for raw materials from unreliable sources like the PRC or Russia? It seems unlikely. Nevertheless, the pressure is on – Peter Garret has developed a bad case of ‘short memory’ and our politicians of all colours have gone very quiet.
No other country hunts whales seriously – only a few aboriginal tribes in North America and the Arctic, and, of course, Norway. But Japan is the only large scale hunter of whales in the entire Pacific region.
Whale was a traditional aboriginal coastal dweller’s food in Japan but is no longer popular with the increasingly urbane population. But whaling is heavily sponsored by the Japanese government in the form of the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), where the word ‘research’ is questioned by the rest of the world.
Does the average Japanese citizen know or care much about the welfare of whales? Do they eat whale meat? Do they know there are stockpiles of Minke scientific samples too PCB contaminated to sell piled up in the ICR iceboxes? Do they know that Japan can’t even give the excess kill away, much less sell it?
Is it advertised on TV? Does it have some magic power as a food? Does it prolong sex? Are whale-burgers selling out at Maccas?
No. No. No.
News teams in the pay of the ICR ask leading questions in Tokyo like “do you like eating kangaroo?” From this they extrapolate that Japanese people equate Australia’s killing of kangaroos with Japan’s slaughter in the Southern Ocean.
Meanwhile the Captain and crew of the Shonan Maru 2 go unpunished for their dangerous and life-threatening actions. Early talk of maritime inquiries in Australia and New Zealand has so far come to nothing and the Japanese are hiding behind a smoke screen of self-righteousness.
Expert legal opinion indicates that any action against the captain of the whaling ship would probably take place in New Zealand, and the International Maritime Organisation in London could decide to act on reports that the offending vessel left the scene of the collision and did not offer help.
But for now it’s a case of ‘wait and see’ if anything is done at all.
– By Jeremy Brown
