"RESFARCH whaling" is malignantly alive
in Japan. In mid-April, a Japanese factory ship, the Nisshin Maru, returned to
Tokyo with 330 minke whales harpooned in the Antarctic during this
year's "research mission".
Japan has earned worldwide notoriety for sickeningly indiscriminate whale
slaughter. It has killed since 1987 about
300 minke whales every year.
Environmentalists say that research is
only another euphemism for commercial whaling, since most of the whale
meat winds up in restaurants.
On paper, Japan has committed no
crime, although the International
Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in 1985. Japan's Institute of
Cetacean Research is free to carry out
so-called research whaling on behalf of
the government.
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