Japan Plans to Arrest Sea Shepherd Crew
The announcement by Japan’s Fisheries Agency that Sea Shepherd crew will be arrested if they disrupt Japanese whale killing operations has done little to stop the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The direct action animal rights organization, as seen on Animal Planet’s “Whale Wars”, says they are “undettered” by the threats.
“When you are willing to die for a whale, the threat of arrest is somewhat trivial,” said Captain Paul Watson. “It can only further our cause of defending the whales if the Japanese take Sea Shepherd crewmembers hostage and haul them back to Japan for prosecution. The diplomatic, political and jurisdictional issues will be profound.”
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If arrested by the Japanese coastguard, Japan has stated that Sea Shepherd crew will be charged with forcible obstruction of business under Japanese law. Sea Shepherd claims they are acting in accordance with the United Nations Charter for Nature, which calls upon individuals and non-governmental organizations to uphold international conservation law.
“We must never forget that Japan is targeting threatened and endangered whales in an officially established whale sanctuary in violation of a global moratorium on commercial whaling and in defiance and contempt of an Australian Federal Court ruling prohibiting the killing of whales in the Australian Antarctic Territory,” said Sea Shepherd International Executive Director Kim McCoy.
The Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin departed on the 7th of December from Newcastle in New South Wales. “Whale Wars” is currently showing on Animal Planet and has been renewed for another season, which will include Splash star Daryl Hannah as a crewmember.
Image Credit: René Ehrhardt on Flickr under Creative Commons license.
This show is awesome and the Japanese know they’re wrong. They need to go back to making cool electronics and not kill whales. Personally, I think they need to get a sub for next season and sink the whole Japanese fleet. (of course rescue the crews first and take them to a nice tropical place….like Bikini Atoll)
Cool, now we have the Lefty Hollywood Hippies getting involved. Nothings says quality TV like a shrieking hippy out to make a good thing all about how they are there to “help out.”
Why don’t we just equip the whales with fricken laser beams?
Boom goes Japanese ships?
Good. I’m sick of these eco-warrior (eco-terrorist) idiots. They give all legit environmental movements a bad name a cause many people to not want to associate with environmentalists because they don’t to be associated with these lunatics.
congratulations on bringing public attention to this malignant practice!…animals are our partners on this world…this issue is as essential as human rights…don’t stop your good works….
The Sea Shepherd and all crewmates are eco-terrorists. The sheer fact that Animal Planet endorses violence and eco-terrorism is appalling. Not to mention, who ends up helping the Sea Shepherd when it will eventually take-on water from ramming a much better equiped vessel in Arctic waters? The Coast Guard of the US is usually the one out there saving their asses. What a waste. I an my family will not be watching Animal Planet if they continue to endorse such glorified acts of terrorism.
Clearly the Japanese are researching how tasty whales are…
Oh dear I feel for the Whales…
Oh wait I forgot sarcasm doesn’t come across so well in text!!
Eco-terrist are more dangerous to whales than anything else. People will not get behind terrorist and Sea Shepard and their crew especially the Catain are undoubtly terrorist. The make the whalers seem sane with their crazy behavior. I also wonder if the fat coward capt thinks that he is one of the 1 Billion people he deserves to live on earth, or if I am. I guess Gahndi and MLK were just idiots and they should have used terorism.