Whaling Contradictions
April 10, 2014
Japan, Australia and the International Court of Justice
Whaling Contradictions
by BINOY KAMPMARK
It has been a long and drawn out affair. For years, Australian environmental activists and political figures have had the Japanese whaling program in their sights. Every year, between 500 to 1000 whales are slain under a permit program ostensibly authorised by the International Whaling Convention. The IWC has been a strange creature. It regulates whale hunting, yet has effectively tried stifling commercial hunting by limiting the catch levels to zero since 1986.
Whaling countries, for that reason, have tiptoed around the commercial restrictions by embracing scientific and aboriginal subsistence arguments. Japan’s own response seemed cunning enough, legitimising the faulty scientific premise by creating the Institute of Cetacean Research in the 1990s. Boats engaged in whale hunting are required to seek permits through the Institute.
Japan’s whaling program is certainly a brutal one, though it is hardly any more spectacular than killing programs mounted by states against species deemed unworthy to live unmolested. It is murky, disingenuous and shrouded in scientific obfuscation. Australia’s challenge in the International Court of Justice was made on that premise.
Hearings before the ICJ began last year, featuring Australia as the anti-whaling torch bearer. Japan was certainly short of allies on the subject, though it can count, among other whaling states, Norway, Russia, Iceland, the Greenland territories under Danish control, and the Faroe Islands. The effort was by no means bipartisan. The Rudd Government attempted to push things along in 2010, though then opposition leader Tony Abbott[1] wasn’t sure. After all, Japan was, and remains, Australia’s largest trading partner.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/10/whaling-contradictions/
