London 17 January 2006: 17 governments today made a formal diplomatic protest against Japanese whaling. The protest, known as a 'demarche', was presented by Brazil and supported by 16 other countries, including the UK.
This protest comes in the wake of the shocking images from Greenpeace's ships in the Southern Ocean where the Japanese whaling fleet is this year killing 935 minke and 10 endangered fin whales. Greenpeace welcomes today's protests from the anti-whaling countries, which coincides with our own international day of action against whaling, and calls on them to keep up the pressure against those who continue to flout the international ban on commercial whaling.
If you want to add your voice to the campaign, then you can take part in our new cyberaction to tell Nissui Europe to get out of the whaling business. Nissui Europe is a 100% owned subsidiary of Nippon Suisan Kaisha Ltd (Nissui) which is Japan's second-largest marine products firm. But Nissui is also a company with strong links to the whaling industry. It owns a one third share in Kyodo Senpaku, a company which operates the whaling fleet which is currently hunting in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.
Get Active! Tell Nissui to end its links to whaling
More things to do online to help protect whales
- Sign up as an Ocean Defender.
- Recruit an Ocean Defender & or five! Tell your friends about the campaign using our ecard and ask them to sign up as Ocean Defenders too.
- Say it with pictures at Flickr - have your say about what whales mean to you by uploading an image or message to Flickr. Just tag it with "nowhaling" and you'll be part of the cluster.
- Ask representatives of the governments who voted for the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary to defend it , before more whale species are endangered or extinct. Your message will go to representatives of the Australian, US, South African, British and New Zealand governments.
Share your own ideas! Got ideas for other ways we can make the people who profit from whaling listen? Send them along to , or post them as a comment at the weblog.
