[Fwd: Arrogant Japan slays the whale and the Caribbean's dignity, armtwists leaders]

naturenews00@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> See an article in yesterday's UK observer on Japan's contemptuous
> vote-buying. Anything that journalists in the Caribbean can do to help
> curb the trend?
>
> See story below. The link to the Observer website:
> http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,490017,00.html
>
> see below
>
> Gerald S.
> Observer-reader
>
> =================================================================
>
> Save the whales? Not if Japan's bribes pay off
>
> Foreign aid comes at a price for one small island and the giant
> creatures that patrol its shores.
>
> Tokyo will provide the cash - but only if Dominica adds its vote to a
> move to bring back whale slaughter
>
> Anthony Browne
> Sunday May 13, 2001
> The Observer
>
> Dominica is a speck on the world map, a beautiful Caribbean island
> smothered in dense volcanic jungle. With a population smaller than a
> typical British country town and landing space for nothing but the
> smallest planes, it is off the usual tourist trail.
>
> But the island has found itself at the centre of an international
> power struggle that will reach a climax in London in July. Ministers
> and diplomats from the world's richest countries have flocked here
> brandishing open cheque books, suitcases stuffed with cash - and, in
> some cases, muttering dark threats. The Caribbean nation may be home
> to fewer than 70,000 people, but it has one asset that other countries
> are prepared to pay big money for: a vote on the international body
> that sets the rules for commercial hunting of whales. With that vote,
> Dominica has a voice equal in weight to that of the US, the UK or
> Japan.
>
> Dominica's Ministers have enjoyed a string of overseas trips with
> lavish VIP treatment normally reserved for royalty. Keen to get a ban
> on whaling lifted, Japan has flooded the country with cash and aid
> in the hope that Dominica will vote to allow slaughter to recommence.
>
> In Dominica's hands - and those of a few other small nations - is the
> future of the world's great whales. Since the International Whaling
> Commission voted for a ban on whaling in 1982, some species such as
> minke and sperm have started recovering. The blue whale remains
> critically endangered.
>
> In its desperate bid to overturn the moratorium and boost its whaling
> industry, Japan is using offers of aid and the threat of its
> withdrawal to get support from the world's poorest nations. Now
> anti-whaling nations and environmental groups are returning fire.
>
> In Roseau, the capital, it is clear who is winning the battle as you
> sail into the port. Outside the huge new fisheries complex, the flags
> of Dominica and Japan are flying. At the base of the flags and
> near a fleet of Toyota lorries, is a plaque: 'Grant aid by the
> government of Japan as a token of friendship and co-operation
> between Japan and the Commonwealth of Dominica.'
>
> Japan has recruited six Caribbean nations, as well as the Solomon
> Islands in the Pacific, and Guinea in Africa, to vote with it in the
> International Whaling Commission. Under IWC rules, the votes will be
> allowed at the commission's July meeting in London.
>
> It will show that Japan has assembled a blocking minority, making it
> impossible for other countries to pass any further conservation
> measures, such as the creation of a whale sanctuary in the south
> Pacific, particularly favoured by Australia and New Zealand. With the
> recruitment of a few more countries, Japan could assemble a simple
> majority, sufficient to change IWC rules to enable the return of
> commercial whaling. Japan refutes the allegations of aid-for-votes,
> but an Observer investigation has revealed the extent of the practice.
> It has also revealed that Japan is copying the tactics the
> anti-whalers employed in the late 1970s, enabling them to impose the
> moratorium in the first place.
>
> For Atherton Martin, Dominica's past Environment and Fisheries
> Minister, the meeting last year should have been simple. The Japanese
> ambassador had flown in from Trinidad to talk about whaling, but
> insisted on tying the subject to aid. As Martin answered that
> Dominica's priority was renewable energy, the ambassador stared out of
> the window, and simply said: 'Fisheries'.
>
> As part of the strategy to encourage the commercial exploitation of
> the sea, Japan's preferred method of aid is building fish processing
> plants.
>
> The ambassador went to Prime Minister Roosevelt Douglas and repeated
> the offer. In the run-up to last year's IWC meeting in Adelaide,
> Japanese officials visited Douglas, and threatened to pull the aid if
> Dominica didn't vote with Japan. When the Cabinet met, it decided to
> abstain on the sanctuary. But before the vote was cast, Douglas phoned
> his representative Lloyd Pascal and instructed him to vote with the
> Japanese.
>
> Martin resigned as Minister. 'It was such a breach of Cabinet trust.
> For the last 25 years we have been promoting ourselves as "nature
> island". It is totally incompatible to be seen to promote whaling,' he
> said. Two months after the vote, Douglas went on a trip to Tokyo to
> demand the aid be paid.
>
> The Japanese have offered the three former Prime Ministers of Dominica
> fisheries complexes within their own constituencies. Many senior
> politicians and officials are wooed to Japan on all-expense paid
> trips. Pascal, who is now Fisheries Minister, has been on two trips
> to Japan in the last year. As well as the fisheries complex in Roseau,
> Japan has given two $76,000 dollar ambulances. On an impoverished
> island, the few roads are clogged with top-of-the-range reconditioned
> Toyotas, Hondas and Nissans.
>
> Japan also pays Dominica's £45,000 annual IWC membership fee. Japan
> denies it, but a Dominican Minister confirmed: 'Put it like this, we
> make no allocation for it in our national budget.'
>
> Martin said the Japanese threat was explicit: 'They make it clear,
> that if you don't vote for them, they will have to reconsider the aid.
> They use money crudely to buy influence.'
>
> At the IWC meetings, Japan follows through its tactics by chaperoning
> the island's officials. 'They do not allow them free for a moment -
> not even at cocktail parties. It's disgusting, it's appalling. It's
> beyond colonial,' said Martin. During the meetings, the Japanese pass
> notes to the Caribbean officials, and prompt them to speak.
>
> And it's not just Dominica. A total of six island states now support
> Japan. Last year Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St
> Lucia, and St Vincent all voted with Japan and against the UK on every
> whaling issue. 'Small islands are enormously vulnerable to offers of
> aid.
>
> Through extortion with aid, Japan has been able to get many island
> nations to join the International Whaling Commission and vote its
> way,' said Martin.
>
> Kate O'Connell, of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, said:
> 'In this no-holds-barred effort to buy votes and influence, at both
> regional and international levels, Japan has exploited not only
> whales, but the needs of developing nations as well.'
>
> Japan is the world's most generous aid donor, and insists there is no
> connection with whaling votes. Joji Morishita, deputy director of the
> Japanese Far Seas Fisheries Division, told The Observer: 'No condition
> has ever been put on aid. We give aid to countries such as India, Peru
> and Argentina who are anti-whaling. If we were trying to buy votes,
> they should all vote for us.'
>
> But the uncomfortable truth for environmental groups is that Japan is
> simply copying the tactics employed to get the ban on whaling through
> in the first place. Prior to the crucial vote in 1982, countries such
> as Egypt, Belize, Monaco, Oman, Costa Rica and Senegal were all
> signed up to the IWC to swell the anti-whaling vote. Just like the
> Japanese, environmental groups also paid for the membership fees. Ray
> Gambell, the secretary of the IWC for 25 years, said: 'A lot of
> governments who joined immediately before 1982 voted for the
> moratorium in that year. Many are no longer members.'
>
> Pierre Charles, Dominica's present Prime Minister, insists he has had
> no contact with the Japanese, but didn't deny the link. 'I am not
> commenting on it. No one can put pressure on me.'
>
> Charles is trying to kick-start a stagnant economy. 'Everyone is going
> on about whaling, whaling, whaling, but what about the poverty we have
> here? We are a tiny country trying to survive, and all people want to
> talk about is what way we vote on a whale sanctuary. We have real
> people with real poverty here,' he said.
>
> And there's the rub. Those who run the country's infant tourist
> industry insist they make far more money from getting people
> to watch whales than selling their votes to let the Japanese kill
> them. Dominica prides itself as the whale-watching capital of the
> Caribbean. It is one of the few places in the world where you can sit
> at a seaside restaurant and watch sperm whales jump out of the water
> in front of you.
>
> Greenpeace campaigner Audrey Cardwell said: 'When you kill a whale you
> make money for one day, but if you let it live you can make money from
> taking people out to watch it three times a day for 50 years.'
>
> The lobbying is now reaching boiling point before July's meeting in
> London. The Japanese have already sent two delegations to Dominica
> this year. The Environment Minister of New Zealand will shortly tour
> Caribbean islands. At least that could give Dominica a choice: it
> could simply sell its vote to the highest bidder.
>
>
> anthony.browne@observer.co.uk
>
Received on Tue May 15 16:46:33 2001