Denmark will not extradite anti-whaling activist Paul Watson to Japan

reuters.com

18 points·aziaziazi··5 comments

Great news. Sea Shepherd does amazing work in stopping Japan’s inhumane whaling practices, which are often falsely claimed to be research expeditions. Japan isn’t the only country still engaging in the cruel hunting of these highly social and intelligent creatures but they’re the most visible. The international community has not reigned in Japan’s whaling activity, and so the burden has fallen on groups like Sea Shepherd.

Next up: disruption of China’s giant fleets of illegal and unsustainable fishing ships.

Might be a bit of my bias from living in Europe but I feel Iceland's and Norway's stupid whaling practices are as visible as Japan's.

Maybe that’s true in Europe. In the US we mostly are exposed to Japan’s practices. I do wonder why that is though. Maybe because there’s more cultural awareness of Japan in the parts of the US that have lots of awareness of whale conservation (west coast)?

Why did they arrest him in the first place?

They convicted him for (not the right legal terms) :

- disturbing whaling acitivities (his defense is that those activities are illegal in regard of international treaties japan signed)

- Injuring on purpose a Japanese mariner. His defence is a (public) video where you can clearly see the pepper grenades are sent on the boat floors, never in direction of mariners. The you see that mariner rush to get a grenade on the floor and throw it back at see shepherds. Too bad: wrong wind direction and everything come back instantly in his face. That is the guy that Japan accused Paul to volontaire injured.

Denmark court rejected the defence requests to show the video during every trials.

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