A bitter face-off in Japan over whaling

[n2doc]

Some say the government is using a pair of arrested Greenpeace activists to send a warning to others in Japan who oppose the nation's controversial whale hunt.
By John M. Glionna
February 14, 2009
Junichi Sato's face clenched when he recalled opening the reeking box of whale meat -- all 50 pounds of it.

"At first we thought it was someone's dismembered body," Sato said. "It was quite depressing."

He and fellow Greenpeace activist Toru Suzuki had tracked the package to a mail depot in northern Japan after tipsters told them it contained whale meat bound for the country's black market, smuggled by crew members of a ship commissioned to kill the mammals for scientific research, not profit.

But when they held a cameras-flashing news conference last spring to turn the meat over to police, the officers instead arrested the activists for trespass and theft.

That put them at the center of a bitter face-off between environmentalists and the Japanese government, which many believe wants to severely punish the pair as a warning to citizens who question the country's controversial whaling policy.

Japanese officials say the men -- dubbed the Tokyo Two -- are eco-terrorists who stole the meat from a legitimate transporter to falsely malign the nation's whaling establishment. The pair faced a pretrial hearing in their case this week; they could receive up to 10 years in jail if convicted.

more:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-whales14-2009feb14,0,5110794.story

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