Greenpeace - Making Waves: The Japanese whaling industry was on trial this week!

Allison is an assistant who has been in Aomori this week - supporting our "Tokyo Two" team. She's been blogging throughout the week - during Junichi and Toru's trial. Here's some extracts from her blog posts as a summary of this week's trial proceedings - along with drawings from the courtroom - by Jules, another one of our campaign assistants (her drawing on the left is of the lead Tokyo Two defence counsel, Yuichi Kaido, in court.)

March 8th, Witnesses and Tall Tales

It began with a testimony given today by former crew member (Mr. X) of the Nisshin Maru. He is entangled in this case because some of his “souvenir” whale meat was contained in the box of evidence discovered by Junichi and Toru.

Although he was a defense witness, Mr. X was not exactly thrilled to be in the Aomori courtroom and was considered a hostile witness. According to his own evidence, he must have taken far more than his “souvenir” allowance in 'unesu' or whale bacon as a crew member. His story has changed in regards to amounts, of whale meat he sent home in boxes, the types of cuts (young whale unesu or less valuable guts and fins).

Mr. X was unable to explain why more senior crew members leave with more “luggage” at the end of their journey, boxes and boxes of items loaded immediately by the processing crew onto to trucks after arriving to port. They would not have been able to acquire such a load from gift shopping at ports of call (there are no shopping malls in the Southern Ocean). He also couldn’t explain why a box of whale bacon worth thousands of dollars was labeled cardboard.

We hope that the Aomori District Court will get the message from our living statue who faced the cold and snow today. Justice is blind, and the judges should not weigh evidence one way because of government involvement.

March 9th, Truth Takes the Witness Stand

Junichi and Toru sit across from the prosecution table. Between the prosecution and the defense is a three-sided screen blocking the audience view of the witness stand. These screens kept away from sight a whistle blower witness, the only one of many informants during the whale meat embezzlement investigation to take the stand.

The whistle blower commented that in his view, embezzlement occurred when crew took the best parts of whale meat on deck before the company takes its official data, when the total amount of whale caught is never properly recorded. He witnessed crewmembers salting or preserving whale meat in their rooms, and noted that crew members favor the young and soft whale meat. One difference between “souvenir” meat distributed by Kyodo Senpaku, and “embezzled” meat he noted, was that embezzled meat is often of higher quality. He said that whilst he was on the ship officials, members of ICR, The Institute of Cetacean Research took onomi, tail meat for themselves claiming it was for research.

Then Junichi took to the stand. He told the the court that after talking to the prosecutor’s office which had agreed to follow-up on the Tokyo Two's investigation, Junichi was surprised to discover later that the investigation had been dropped. He was more surprised though when a reporter called him to ask if he had any comments about his imminent arrest to occur the next day.

Junichi gave an impassioned speech about citizens and democracy, that citizens have a right to investigate. If this was just a case of a stolen box, why would he make such elaborate documentation and research? NGOs should be supported in their endeavors to uncover the truth for the public good.

March 10th, An Emotional Day in Court: T2 give key evidence

This afternoon, in an emotional moment Toru recounted his experience surrounding his arrest. In numbers: 75 police officers were sent to arrest the T2, 8 men searched Toru's home, he spent 26 days in custody, 23 without charges and under interrogation without lawyers, he lost 6 kilos in the first 4 days of a 9 day hungerstrike in protest of the disregard by police of the Greenpeace explanation of the investigation.

Toru was told by one policeman that it usually takes only two officers to arrest a person for a something like taking a box. The police's reaction during the T2 arrest versus their reaction to the embezzlement evidence was disproportionate to say the least.

March 11th, Expert Witness Gives Testimony on Human Rights

Having deconstructed the cover-up of the embezzlement scandal during the first part of the week, the defense now had to establish that Junichi and Toru were not only morally, but also legally justified in their actions. To do so, it had called Professor Dirk Voorhoof (pictured above), an international expert on the right to freedom of expression, to explain the significance of international treaties Japan has ratified.

>> Read the full statement of Prof. Dirk Voorhoof.

Prof. Voorhoof pointed out to the court that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has already handed down an opinion that the arrest of Junichi and Toru, and the seizure of Greenpeace office computers and documents violated Article 19 of the ICCPR. This is an authoritative opinion reached by international experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. A conviction of Junichi and Toru would only increase the chilling effect in society. Voorhoof also stated that the T2 case shows how important transparency in a democracy is. Media, NGOs, and citizens have a right to contribute to this process: "If Japan wants to develop more as an open and pluralistic society, it should value the voices of NGOs and their contribution to the public interest."

The trial continues on May 14th. Half a million calls for justice have been made to the Japanese Government.

>>Join the pledge to support Junichi and Toru.