Letters to the editor, January 15, 2016

4-MIN READ4-MIN

This file photo provided by the Australian Customs Service shows what the Australian government says is the slain carcasses of a minke whale and her calf being hauled aboard a Japanese harpoon ship in Antarctic waters. Photo: AP

Published: 3:38pm, 15 Jan 2016Updated: 12:47pm, 15 Oct 2020

Japan’s whale mission is beyond belief

I refer to the letter “Court did not prohibit Japan from doing research whaling” (December 18) by Dan Goodman. I would like to point out the following errors in his piece that may misinform and misguide your readers.

Mr Goodman challenged a statement in an earlier South China Morning Post editorial that the “court ordered Japan to stop whaling after determining that the programme could not be considered scientific in nature” and claimed it was misleading (“Japan’s dogged pursuit of whale hunting despite global outcry puts at risk its international standing”, December 6). However, in fact, the paper’s statement was correct.

The International Court of Justice actually stated and ruled that the programme was “not for the purposes of scientific research” and that “Japan was abusing a scientific exemption set out in the 1986 international moratorium on whaling”. It concluded that “Tokyo was carrying out a commercial hunt and using science as a fig leaf”, according to a report.

Mr Goodman is correct that Japan may submit a new revised scientific whaling programme, and so Japan has created the “Newrep-A” proposal as a lethal scientific whale research programme. This was submitted to the International Whaling Commission this year (as Mr Goodman correctly points out). What Mr Goodman neglects to mention is that the commission’s 2015 scientific committee report found “the new proposal contained insufficient information for its expert panel to complete a full review” and specified the extra work that Japan needed to undertake in order to fill these gaps.

Regardless of failing to appease the International Whaling Commission, Japan sent its whaling fleet south at the start of December last year to kill 333 whales in an internationally recognised whale sanctuary.

Letters to the editor, January 15, 2016

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}