Environmental campaigner Paul Watson has been detained in Greenland and is now facing extradition to Japan.
Anti-whaling campaigner and Greenpeace co-founder Paul Watson was arrested on Sunday on an international warrant issued by Japan. The activist has been sought by Tokyo for over a decade over violent altercations with local whalers.
The 73-year-old veteran environmental activist ended up in custody when his ship got raided by police after docking in Greenland for resupply.
Watson has already appeared before a district court that will now decide on his possible extradition to Japan, local police said in a statement.
The Captain Paul Watson Foundation has condemned the potential extradition as a “politically motivated request,” urging the Danish government to release the activist immediately. The Foundation revealed Watson was in the middle of a campaign to intercept the Kangei Maru, a large, newly-built Japanese whaling ship.
The arrest of the activist likely stemmed from an international Red Notice issued against him by Japan back in 2012 on charges of causing damage and injury in two incidents with a Japanese whaling vessel back in 2010. While the Red Notice had been ultimately dropped, Tokyo apparently quietly put it back, the Foundation suggested.
“This development comes as a surprise since the Foundation’s lawyers had reported that the Red Notice had been withdrawn. However, it appears that Japan made the notice confidential to facilitate Paul’s travel for the purpose of making an arrest,” the Foundation explained.
The group also alleged that the arrest of Watson was set up specifically to coincide with the launch of the Kangei Maru. The new, massive $47-million whaling vessel was commissioned earlier this year and is currently out in the North Pacific.
Commercial whaling was banned by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) back in 1986, yet Japan was allowed to continue hunting a small number of whales each year in the Antarctic for “scientific” purposes. In 2014, the International Court of Justice ordered Tokyo to stop these hunts as well, ruling they were not actually legitimate scientific endeavors but rather a guise for commercial whaling.
Japan ultimately withdrew from the IWC four years later, ending the Antarctic “scientific” expeditions while resuming commercial whaling in its domestic waters. Tokyo has for long argued that whaling and consuming the meat of marine mammals was an integral part of the country’s “culture.”
The truth about how the meat industry funds
So called environmental NGO ‘s.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UsigH2Skfdg&pp=ygUKY293c3BpcmFjeQ%3D%3D
Blubber doesn’t sound all that great. Better than bugs I guess….
Any whalers deserves a good kicking.
Blubber. Immediately I think of many NZ politicians. Why is that? :-I
Sickening. Japan’s deplorable record on whaling is the real crime here. Denmark needs to grow the fuck up, too ….
First off, whaling is abhorrent. I don’t support it and I’m glad that most of the world’s nations no longer partake in it.
Having said that though, Paul Watson is an abject idiot and a legitimate menace. I watched his show on the discovery channel a few years back, was not impressed. The world abandoned commercial whaling, the japs did not. Well crap. What should we about it now, go to war with them? 😒🤦🏼
All due respect to Mr Watson, the planet is made up of more ocean than dry land. Anyone who legitimately believes the whales are going to somehow “run out”, is an MSM-addled sucker. Prior to the petroleum industry’s arrival, whaling was the single biggest industry on earth. For all intents and purposes It WAS the energy industry. Oil, baleen, ambergris, candle wax… Almost EVERY country was engaged in it, the whales never went extinct. Now it’s down to a handful of countries still doing it and we’re supposed to be terrified?
And who the hell is Watson to declare himself a one man war against an entire sovereign nation? No matter how much he may disagree with what they’re doing, there are legitimately innocent sailors on those ships, working many months at sea in awful conditions to support their families. The type of reckless shenanigans Watson used to pull on his tv show (attacking ship propellers, inking windows, playing ship-chicken etc) were dangerous and tantamount to maritime terrorism. Never even mind the lives of all the college simpletons who crew Watson’s own ship. Nope, this is a Disney movie and he’s loveable Captain Jack who can do no wrong!
Again, not defending whaling, but human lives matter more than whales. And just imagine the chaos he could have caused by wrecking two ships full of oil and diesel fuel in those pristine arctic waters inhabited by all the whales he apparently loves so much.
I’m sick to death of the eco warriors.
Go home and take a shower, hippie 🖕