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Since 1986, Japan has been killing whales in violation of the global moratorium on whaling. Each year they have illegally upped the kill quotas and during the last two decades that the whales have been "protected" more than 17,000 whales have been slaughtered. The International Whaling Commission has done very little to stop the carnage. The IWC has great regulations but non-existent enforcement. The member nations of the IWC like Australia and the United States have been reluctant to enforce sanctions for fear of trade retaliations by Japan. The fact remains that Japanese and Norwegian whaling is illegal and if nothing else the regulations of the International Whaling Commission have served to give legitimacy to Sea Shepherd efforts to oppose outlaw whaling since 1986. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has been the only enforcement agency, governmental or non-governmental, defending the whales over the last 20 years beginning with our sinking of half the Icelandic whaling fleet in November 1986 to the scuttling of illegal Norwegian whalers dockside in 1992, 1994 and 1998. This year we harassed and pursued the Japanese whaling fleet in the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary. We did not commit any crimes with our intervention because we were enforcing international conservation law in accordance with the provisions of the U.N. World Charter for Nature, which allows for non-governmental organizations to intervene in order to uphold international conservation law. For this reason, there have been no criminal charges brought against Sea Shepherd crew for these interventions. Criminals are reluctant to retaliate with the law, especially when such retaliation would further expose and provide documentation and evidence of the illegal activities that Sea Shepherd is intervening against. Japan is now seeking to change the laws protecting whales by working to overturn the IWC global moratorium on whaling. And they are succeeding. For the last few years Japan has been using foreign aid to seduce and then recruit small poor nations to join the IWC. These nations then have their IWC memberships paid by Japan and, like little Japanese fiefdoms, they vote as they are told and they are being told to vote for the resumption of whaling and to back Japanese objectives 100%. Last year, Japan succeeded in recruiting an equal number of votes as the whale conservation nations. This year they have surpassed that number and they now hold the majority. Japan just this week announced that the Marshall Islands and Cambodia will vote with Japan at next weeks IWC meeting in St. Kitts on June 16-20th. Japan now has 36 votes among the 69 member nations of the IWC.

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what do japanese use as a defence for why they kill whales? The Japanese fleet consists of a factory ship, two spotter vessels, and three harpoon boats. The whalers say that lethal research is needed to accurately measure the whale population, health, and response to global warming and is essential for the sustainable management of the world's cetacean stocks. Australia and New Zealand have started a non-lethal whale research program to show that the Japanese lethal research program is no longer necessary.Sea Shepherd and other environmental groups dispute the Japanese statement of research "as a disguise for commercial whaling, which is banned." Meat from the hunt is available at Tokyo's famed [|Tsukiji fish market] and Japanese restaurants.

the research Japan has two whale research programs, one in the Antarctic that began in 1987 in response to claims by a number of members of the IWC that the scientific information was insufficient to properly manage whale stocks. This is the only long-term research program on whales in the Antarctic that is providing valuable information related to whales and the Antarctic ecosystem [] <<site pretty much supports japanand thinks there doing nothing wrong. []
 * Q:** Are Japan's research programs a violation of the moratorium and the sanctuary in the Antarctic? Are Japan's whale research programs illegal?
 * A:** No. Japan's whale research programs are perfectly legal. Article VIII of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) specifically provides for members of the IWC to issue permits for the killing of whales for research purposes. Article VIII of the ICRW begins with the words "Notwithstanding anything contained in this Convention…" Further, both the moratorium and the Antarctic Sanctuary apply only to commercial whaling. Contrary to claims by Greenpeace, Japan's whale research programs are not a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Nothing in the UNCLOS diminishes or restricts in any way, rights provided by the ICRW.