20
June 2008 - Tokyo, Japan — Japanese police
have arrested two Greenpeace activists for
exposing a whale meat scandal involving
the government-sponsored whaling programme.
The two activists, Junichi Sato, 31, and
Toru Suzuki, 41, are being investigated
for allegedly stealing a box of whale meat
which they presented as evidence.
The box of the most
expensive cuts of whale meat had been illicitly
removed by crew of the Nisshin Maru, the
whaling factory ship, following this year's
Southern Ocean whale hunt. Its contents
were marked "cardboard" and it
was shipped to a private address. Tracked
by our investigators, it was intercepted
and turned over to the Public Prosecutor
in Tokyo, as evidence of wide-scale corruption
at the heart of the whaling operation in
the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.
Take Action: demand
the release of Junichi and Toru
We requested an investigation
into the scandal, and the Public Prosecutor
agreed that there was sufficient evidence
of wrongdoing. In light of evidence that
the operators of the whaling operation were
aware of the scandal and did nothing, we
asked that the investigation not focus on
crew, but on the bureaucrats who run the
whaling programme at public expense. Instead,
Japanese police arrested the Greenpeace
activists in a show of force, occupying
the Greenpeace offices with 40 police for
more than 10 hours while they seized computers,
documents, and cell phones.
The Japanese whaling
programme costs the Japanese taxpayer 500
million yen per year (around 4.7 million
US dollars).
UPDATE 21 June 2008
The Tokyo District Prosecutor Office announced
that it has been unable to find evidence
of the embezzlement and that the investigation
into crew and whaling officials has been
dropped.
Clearly this has been
a difficult investigation for the Prosecutor's
Office when the level of corruption runs
so deep in the whaling industry, an industry
backed by powerful forces within the government.
However, some questions remain unanswered:
If Kyodo Senpaku, the company that operates
the whaling ships, was legally giving out
whale meat to the crew then why did they
change their story three times in almost
as many days?
Why did the crew lie about the contents
of the boxes containing the meat, claiming
that they contained cardboard when in fact
they were stuffed full of prime whale meat
cuts worth tens of thousands of dollars?
And why, before the scandal was exposed,
did an official of the Japanese Fisheries
agency claim that whale meat was never given
to crew?
+ More
Read the full dossier
of evidence, and decide for yourself
UPDATE 22 June 2008
At a hearing this morning, the "Tokyo
Two" have been ordered held another
ten days without charge. We are appealing
that decision tomorrow. In the meantime,
our lawyer believes that the number of people
who have written demanding their release
-- nearly 50,000 at this writing -- could
help their case considerably.
UPDATE 23 June 2008
Our appeal has been rejected, and Junichi
and Toru have been ordered to spend a further
9 days in jail without charge. Under Japanese
law, they can be held for up to 23 days
without charge. More than 100,000 people
have now taken our global cyberaction demanding
their release.
UPDATE 27 June 2008
Greenpeace has begun a series of actions
at Japanese embassies around the world protesting
the detention of Junichi and Toru. 170,000
people have now written to demand their
relase. Please, if you have not already
done so, take action and encourage others
to do so as well: http://www.greenpeace.org/tokyo-two
"This is the backlash," said Greenpeace
Executive Director Jun Hoshikawa. "We've
uncovered a scandal involving powerful forces
in the Japanese government that benefit
from whaling, and it's not surprising they
are striking back. What is surprising is
that these activists, who are innocent of
any crime, would be arrested for returning
whale meat that was stolen from Japanese
taxpayers. In whose interest were these
arrests made? Because it would appear to
us that this is an intimidation tactic by
the government agencies responsible for
a scandal."
Intimidation tactics
Our first news that
an arrest was imminent came from Japanese
television stations. Someone leaked the
information to ensure images of Greenpeace
activists under arrest appeared on news
reports in Japan.
More than 40 police
officers raided our offices and the homes
of the activists, and spent 10 hours seizing
cell phones, documents, and computers, despite
the fact that we had documented every step
of how we obtained the whale meat, turned
the full dossier over with the evidence,
and made ourselves available to police to
help with the investigation at any time.
A simple phone call could have brought Junichi
and Toru to the police station. Instead,
the government made a public spectacle of
shutting Greenpeace down.
The investigation
Our four-month undercover investigation
revealed evidence of an embezzlement ring
involving crew members on board the Nisshin
Maru, who were openly taking the best cuts
of whale meat during the so-called scientific
hunt, smuggling it ashore disguised as personal
luggage and then passing it to traders for
illegal sales.
Working from information
given by former and current Kyodo Senpaku
employees, we documented the off-loading
of smuggled whale meat into a special truck,
in full view of Kyodo Senpaku officials
and crew members when the Nisshin Maru docked
on April 15th, this year.
The consignment was
documented by our team once it left the
ship and tracked to a depot in Tokyo. One
of four boxes destined for the same private
address was then intercepted in order to
verify the contents and establish the fraud.
The consignment notes
claimed the box contained "cardboard"
but in reality it held 23.5kg of salted
'prime' whale meat, worth up to US$3,000.
One informer told Greenpeace that dozens
of crew take as many as 20 boxes each. One
crewmember was overheard to claim he had
built a house on the proceeds from his whale-meat
sales over the years.
Official denials
On May 8th, before the
scandal broke, Takahide Naruko, an official
with the Japanese Fisheries Agency, was
asked by investigators whether sailors "bring
back some whale meat as private souvenirs,"
to which he replied "Of course not,"
explaining that the distribution of whale
meat was only through official channels,
at a price set by the Fisheries Agency to
offset the costs of the publicly funded
whaling programme.
Following the revelations,
Kyodo Senpaku, the company that runs the
whaling ship, also at first denied that
any whale meat was being given away or sold
outside official channels, then changed
their story to claim that some "souvenirs"
were given to crew members. Even so, these
souvenirs were described to be a few kilos
of frozen whale meat -- very different from
23.5 kilos of prime cuts uncovered by Greenpeace,
which the crew salt-pickle in their cabins.
On May 28th, an editorial
in Asahi Shinbum noted the contradiction
between claims by the Institute for Cetacean
Research that souvenirs were being handed
out, and the claims by Kyodo Senpaku that
they were not. The newspaper called the
"contrived explanations" suspicious
and asked for a full investigation.
"The whaling programme
in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is
funded by the Japanese taxpayers, including
the Greenpeace activists who have been arrested,
and they have a right to know who is profiting
from their money," said Mister Hoshikawa.
"The Japanese whaling
programme has been shamed internationally
for its lack of scientific credibility,
now it is being shamed at home as well for
trying to hide the corruption, and now for
taking revenge on those who have exposed
it. The Greenpeace activists should be immediately
released."
+ More
Greenpeace activists
block restart of French nuclear reactor
construction (Updated)
26 June 2008 - Flamanville,
France — Twenty of our activists have successfully
stopped construction of a new nuclear reactor
being built in Flamanville, France, from
restarting, for over 50 hours. Although
building was halted because of safety problems,
these are still unresolved.
The activists have been
blocking three quarries that supply the
gravel and sand for the concrete needed
to build the foundations of the reactor.
The peaceful direct action is in response
to the French Nuclear Safety Authority's
(ASN) decision to allow construction to
resume.
The ASN has done this
despite the fact that none of the safety
problems that stopped building in the first
place has been addressed.
The reactor is a European
Pressurised Reactor (EPR), the flagship
of the so-called "nuclear renaissance".
So far, construction of the EPR has only
started in Finland and France and both experiences
have been disastrous.
UPDATE : 27 June 2008
After 60 hours our activists were removed
from the last of the three quarries, by
which time they had prevented almost 400
deliveries of gravel.
Determined to continue we have moved our
activities to the town of Caen in Normandy
where we are now blocking the concrete supplier
which provides all the concrete used in
the construction of the reactor.
Chronic safety problems
In May, the ASN ruled that construction
at Flamanville must stop. It did this because
of chronic problems that have affected the
quality of the construction work since building
began in December 2007. These include issues
relating to the quality control; problems
with reinforcement and concrete for the
foundations and with metal and welding.
Basically, the French
nuclear industry was unable to pour concrete
for the base correctly. It's a discovery
that gives little confidence that they will
be able to handle masses of radioactive
material.
ASN reversed its decision,
so we had to take action
On Wednesday the activists stopped some
3000 tonnes of gravel (30 lorry loads going
4 times a day) from being taken from the
quarries. Some activists have been evicted,
but the blockade continues - with more people
arriving from across Europe.
Greenpeace "eye
in the sky" airship delivers "Non!
to nuclear" message to Finland
The problems at Flamanville echo those of
the first EPR construction site, Olkiluoto
3, in Finland. At the same time as the French
blockade, a Greenpeace airship is delivering
a clear anti-nuclear message in Finland.
The 43-metre long black
and yellow "eye in the sky" airship
bears a banner showing a shattered radiation
symbol and the words "Non Merci!"
On Tuesday it flew by the Finnish reactor
site.
Since construction began
in 2005, the estimated costs of the reactor
have nearly doubled to just short of €5
billion- and yes, it is taxpayers who are
left to foot the bill. Two and a half years
behind schedule it has been plagued with
safety problems. A list produced by Finnish
regulators included 1500 "quality deviations"
- read faulty. Finnish energy industry figures
show, that when, and if, it finally comes
online it will only deliver a third of the
greenhouse gas emission reductions originally
promised.
Nuclear power undermines
solutions to climate change
The "Non Merci!"
message is in French because it's a direct
communication to the French government and
the state-owned companies EDF and Areva,
who are not only attempting to build in
Flamanville, but are aggressively promoting
the fault-ridden reactor design across the
world, claiming it to be a low-cost "mature"
technology.
Here's the thing: despite
the multi-billion Euro spin of the nuclear
industry, nuclear power undermines climate
protection, by diverting urgently needed
resources away from real solutions. Our
Energy [R]evolution blueprint shows that
renewable energy, and greater energy efficiency
can deliver half of the world's energy needs
by 2050, without nuclear power.
Governments must heed
the stark warnings from Olkiluoto and Flamanville
and just say "Non!" to France's
dodgy nuclear salesmen.
