UN Court Orders Japan To End Whaling In Antarctic

The United Nations’ highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has banned Japan from hunting for whales off Antarctica, ruling that the nation’s annual hunt was not for scientific research as Tokyo had claimed, reported the Associated Press.

The United Nations’ highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has banned Japan from hunting for whales off Antarctica, ruling that the nation’s annual hunt was not for scientific research as Tokyo had claimed, reported the Associated Press.

In a 12-4 ruling on Monday, the ICJ said that Japan had failed to demonstrate during a three-week trial last year that its claimed right to harvest about 1,000 whales each year was for scientific research.

Japan is now banned from whaling unless it can prove the hunt is for scientific purposes and any future “research” must be done by non-lethal means, the ICJ said.

“The evidence does not establish that the program’s design and implementation are reasonable in relation to achieving its stated objectives,” the court’s presiding judge, Peter Tomka, read from the ruling. The court ordered Japan to cease its whaling operations in the Southern Ocean “with immediate effect.”

The case was first brought to the ICJ in 2010, when Australia lodged a complaint, accusing Japan of skirting a 1986 International Whaling Commission ban on killing the mammals by cloaking its operations “in the lab coat of science.”

Of the 14,410 whales harvested for research purposes since 1986, about 95 percent were killed by Japanese whaling crews, Australia said in its court filing.

Former Australian environment minister Peter Garrett, who oversaw the suit’s launch, said he felt vindicated.

“I’m absolutely over the moon, for all those people who wanted to see the charade of scientific whaling cease once and for all,” Garrett told journalists, as cited by Bloomberg. “I think (this) means without any shadow of a doubt that we won’t see the taking of whales in the Southern Ocean in the name of science.”

A spokesman for Greenpeace UK, Willie MacKenzie, also welcomed the ICJ’s decision.

[quote]”The myth that this hunt was in any way scientific can now be dismissed once and for all,” he told the BBC.[/quote]

Related: Japan Admits Using $29 Million From Disaster Fund For Whaling Hunt

Although a statement from Japan’s chief cabinet secretary said that the government was “disappointed” by the ICJ’s decision, it added that Japan would “abide by the Judgment of the Court.”

Nevertheless, whaling is still being defended by some Japanese, who feel unfairly singled out by international criticism and who argue that the hunts are a Japanese tradition.

“Some people eat beef, others eat whale. We should respect all cultures,” said Komei Wani, who leads the Group to Preserve Whale Dietary Culture, based in the whaling town of Shimonoseki. “As long as there are enough whales to go around, why can’t we hunt a few?”

Nanami Kurasawa, an anti-whaling advocate who heads a marine conservation group in Tokyo, highlighted limitations to the ICJ’s ruling.

“It’s an important decision, but it also leaves the Japanese government a lot of leeway,” Kurasawa told the New York Times. “The Japanese government could start research whaling again but under a different name, and it would be out of the ruling’s purview.”