IT'S TIME TO EXPEL JAPAN FROM THE INTERNATIONAL WHALING COMMISSION
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Graham Clarke
June 2005

May starts International Whaling Commission (IWC) season and this year the IWC is having it's Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Ulsan (a former whaling city), South Korea.

South Korea is a place that has started a whale study and is building a whale meat factory so it's obviously sympathetic to modern whaling.

Currently in Korea, whales can be brought ashore and sold for meat only if they are accidentally caught. However, Korea has accidental by catch rates up to a hundred times higher than nations that do not have a whale meat factory. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that in a country where dead whales are worth up to $100,000 the processing of whale meat will encourage the deliberate targeting of Korea's disappearing whales and become an outlet for illicit trade in whale products.

Presently, Government officials and experts are in Korea to attend the Scientific Committee sessions which will last until 12th of June, whereupon they will report to the 57th AGM from 20th to 24th June.

For some years now Tokyo has threatened to leave the IWC. But as you know it hasn't! Even with yearly denial of approval to whale Japan has remained a member. Strange that!

Japan remains in the IWC because out of all the international bodies the IWC has the most lax rules about killing animals. And that's because in the beginning the IWC was just a "hunting club" brought about to give everyone an even share of whales.

Japan won't leave the safety of the IWC. Japan MUST be expelled!

After Japan is expelled from the IWC and it sends whalers to the Antarctic to slaughter whales it will be bound by a much stricter Law than the inadequate rules of the IWC. It will be bound by the Antarctic Treaty.

Currently, the Antarctic Authority regards the IWC as a more relevent authority in relation to cetaceans and allows the IWC to administer it's own member countries while in regions covered by the Treaty. But when Japan is expelled from the IWC it will be bound by the Antarctic Treaty whenever it enters Antarctic waters.

The Preamble to the Antarctic Treaty states: "Recognizing that it is in the interest of all mankind that Antarctica shall continue forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord."

Japan is creating international discord!

Article IX, 1 states: "Representatives of the Contracting Parties. . . shall. . . for the purpose of. . . formulating and considering, and recommending to their Governments, measures in furtherance of the principles and objectives of the Treaty, including measures regarding:

f) preservation and conservation of living resources in Antarctica."

Japan's whaling cannot and does not preserve or conserve!

Southern Ocean whales have not recovered and 'ANY CLAIMS BY JAPAN MUST NOT BE CONSIDERED' until whales are again found in the same numbers as described by the whalers of 1791.

Japan is insisting it will continue killing whales in the Region.

Japan MUST be banned from 'WHALING IN' the Antarctic."

If Japan does not leave it MUST be expelled from the IWC.

Stay concerned,

Graham Clarke.

Webmail: http://www.e-mailus.net/user/A03100/ 

Comments? http://www.whales.org.au/comments 

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