Japan, March 13: Greens leader Bob Brown has vowed to back an international campaign to free an anti-whaling activist arrested in Japan.
Sea Shepherd activist Peter Bethune was arrested by Japanese authorities when the whaling patrol boat Shonan Maru 2 that he boarded without invitation in the Antarctic reached Tokyo.
Senator Brown warned that Japanese courts had a “98 per cent conviction rate” but he would not let people forget about Mr Bethune’s plight.
“They don’t have the trial by jury system we know about,” he told AAP.
“There will be an international campaign to free Peter Bethune so if either the Australian or New Zealand authorities thought it was all going to die away, it will not.”
Bethune, a New Zealander, has been detained by the Japanese for nearly a month since jumping aboard the Shonan Maru No. 2 on February 15 and has been charged with trespass.
He sought to make a citizens arrest of its master for attempted murder of the crew on his boat, the Ady Gil, and presented a demand for $3.28 million compensation for the advanced carbon fibre-Kevlar powerboat.
The protest vessel sank after colliding with a whaling boat in January.
“The crew on the Shonan Maru No.2 ought to be in the dock and the ship impounded … for illegal whaling and illegally refuelling in the Antarctic and illegally running down the Ady Gil,” Senator Brown said.
“It’s a travesty of justice and highlights the spinelessness of the Rudd government.”
Senator Brown is angry that Australian Federal Police searched the anti-whaling ship the Steve Irwin in Hobart last week, saying the government had caved in to pressure from the Japanese.
“Several weeks ago I wrote to the federal government (to Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith) asking what they would do for Peter Bethune and have not got a word back,” he said.
The Sea Shepherd Society has ended its summer clashing with the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean, while the Japanese fleet is believed to have killed about 700 minke whales during the season.
—Agencies