Why does Japan want the Sea Shepherd “pirate”?

The founder of the ocean protection NGO was arrested Sunday in Greenland, where his boat was stopping. It was heading towards the Northwest Passage to block the path of a Japanese whaling ship.

He was the subject of a “red notice” issued by Interpol at the request of Tokyo since 2012. The founder of the NGO Sea Shepherd, Paul Watson, was arrested on Sunday July 21 in Greenland, where his boat, the John-Paul-DeJoriawas making a stopover. The 73-year-old Canadian “pirate” was placed in detention until August 15 in this vast autonomous Danish territory.

Japan accuses him of “boarding conspiracy” and accuses environmental activists who accompany him of preventing his whalers from operating in the waters glacial ice of Antarctica. Despite this notice, Paul Watson was able to travel freely in several countries, such as France, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Ireland, Sea Shepherd France recalled on Sunday. on XThe NGO now fears that Denmark will extradite the white-bearded activist to Japan and “stands on the side“rogue nations that violate laws and treaties protecting marine mammals” enclosing “LThe Japanese whaling camp.”

This arrest is the latest episode in a long conflict between the Japanese authorities and the figurehead of the show “Whale Wars” (known in France as “Justiciers des mers”), broadcast from 2008 to 2015 on the Animal Planet channel. Since the end of the 1970s, Paul Watson and his NGO have been trying to prevent whaling. The technique used is intended to be pacifist, but not without risk: interposing oneself between the cetaceans and the imposing ships that hunt them.

These activists denounce an illegal activity and rely, among others, on the international body that has regulated whaling since 1946 and joined by nearly 90 countries: the International Whaling Convention (IWC). In 1986, the latter banned whaling commercial whaling, resulting in the creation of two sanctuaries (one in the Indian Ocean, the other in the Southern Ocean).

Gold, Norway, Iceland and Japan, although members of the convention, have continued this activity. The Japanese archipelago (which left the IWC in 2019) has even practiced it for a long time in the sanctuary waters of Antarctica, under the cover of scientific missions. ADuring one of these missions, in January 2010, a Japanese whaling ship, the Shonan Maru No. 2, collided with a Sea Shepherd trimaran, theAdy Gil, which ended up at the bottom of the ocean.

“They [Les Japonais] are mistaken if they imagine that our two remaining ships will retreat from the whale sanctuary in the Southern Ocean.”then reacted Paul Watson, who was on another boat. A month later, the captain of theAdy Gil, New Zealand activist Pete Bethune managed to board the Japanese ship, intending to carry out a “citizen’s arrest” of its captain. For this, Pete Bethune spent more than five months in prison in Japan, before being sentenced by a local court to two years in prison, suspended. The two incidents, which occurred in the Antarctic Ocean in early 2010, marked the beginning of a new phase of the conflict between Tokyo and the NGO. It was then that Japan turned to Interpol to fight Paul Watson.

Sea Shepherd and Japanese authorities have accused each other of being behind the shock and loss of theAdy GilThe Australian Marine Safety Authority, which is investigating the collision, has been unable to determine whether any navigation rules were breached by either side. And this “partly because Japan did not cooperate with the investigation,” write researchers Alan D. Hemmings, Donald Rothwell and Karen N. Scott in a book on Antarctic security issues. The Japanese crew also did not participate in a separate investigation, conducted by New Zealand, which concluded that the behavior of the two ships contributed to the collision, the three authors of the book point out.

“We are simply preventing illegal practices,” hammered Paul Watson, quoted in 2013 by franceinfo. “The Japanese are targeting endangered cetaceans within the confines of a world-renowned sanctuary, in violation of the law governing whaling. I am not the criminal.”

When it left the IWC in 2019, Japan assured that it would limit its whaling to its territorial waters. But the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF) believes the country intends to resume high-seas whaling in the Southern Ocean and North Pacific by 2025, despite denials from the whaling company Kyodo Senpaku. In May 2024, Japan launched a new 113-meter-long and 21-meter-wide ship, the Kangei Maru, thus fueling these suspicions.

It was while trying to reach the ship via the Northwest Passage that Paul Watson was arrested in Greenland. “It has long been said that Japan’s accusations are primarily political, and not based on any crimes.”said the World Locky MacLean, the ship’s captain John-Paul-DeJoria, present during the arrest of his colleague.The reason for Paul Watson’s arrest is not in doubt among his supporters. CPWF sees an action “politically motivated, coinciding with the launch of the new factory ship”reports AFP.

The charges brought by the Japanese courts against the activist have not been disclosed. “He is risking his life. If he goes to Japan, we know we will not see him again because Japan is in a logic of revenge,” alerted the president of Sea Shepherd France, Lamya Essemlali on franceinfo. According to her, this arrest is also linked to the fact that the NGO has “a history” with Denmark “on the issue of dolphin massacres in the Faroe Islands”. The Elysée assured on Tuesday that Emmanuel Macron was following “the situation up close” and that France was intervening with the Danish authorities “so that Paul Watson is not extradited to Japan.”