“ There is no reason to hand over my fighting brother to Japan who flouts all the rules.” The brother Brigitte Bardot is talking about is Paul Watson. The American-Canadian environmental activist was arrested last month in Greenland.
Targeted by an international arrest warrant issued by the Japanese authorities, the famous 73-year-old activist, who has been living in France for a year, was apprehended on July 21 on his ship which had just docked in Nuuk, to refuel with a view to “intercepting” Japan’s new whaling factory ship in the North Pacific.
The arrest was made on the basis of an Interpol red notice issued in 2012, when Japan accused him of causing damage and injuries on board a Japanese whaling ship two years earlier in the Antarctic Ocean.
This Tuesday, the actress once again stepped up to the plate by directly appealing to the International Court of Justice.
“10 years ago, in March 2014, the International Court of Justice condemned Japan for poaching in the Antarctic whale sanctuary and ordered the country to stop this doubly illegal hunt: it violates the moratorium on commercial whaling adopted in 1986 and the Southern Ocean sanctuary created in 1994 at the initiative of France,” writes the Tropezian. Before adding: “This condemnation of Japan is a strong but symbolic signal if nothing is done to enforce international rules for the protection of biodiversity!”
“Captain Paul Watson is facing extradition to Japan for trying to enforce these protection rules by getting between the whales and the harpoons of factory ships that respect nothing and no one.”
Brigitte Bardot therefore implores the President of the International Court of Justice to “help Paul Watson by intervening with the Danish authorities, so that they do not hand over this vigilante to Japan and that they listen to the thousands of citizens scandalized by this miscarriage of justice, this underhanded vengeance of a poaching State.”
And to conclude: “Paul Watson has been in prison since July 21 for opposing poachers, it’s the world upside down!”
G. A.
