Conspiracy to bring back commercial whaling, says Sea Shepherd

[Guest guest]

SEA SHEPHERD INTERNATIONAL

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 21, 2000

 

NETHERLANDS' WHALE HUNT PLAN EXPOSED- Dutch IWC Commissioner and CITES

Secretary leading the way back to commercial slaughter

 

 

The head of the Netherlands delegation to the International Whaling

Commission (IWC) and the Dutch Secretary General of the Convention on

International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) are openly working toward

the goal of legalizing the commercial hunting of whales and worldwide trade

in whale meat.

 

Fer von der Assen leads the Netherlands' delegation to the IWC and chairs

its " Revised Management Scheme " Committee, charged with gathering input from

member nations on the regulatory features of a theoretical future resumption

of whaling, should whale populations someday recover from the decimation of

centuries of commercial hunting. The U.S. IWC delegation's copies of von der

Assen's " Draft Revised Chapter V of the Schedule " and his May 26, 2000,

cover memo, sent from the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, have been obtained

by U.S. Citizens Against Whaling and Sea Shepherd International. They show

that von der Assen proceeded beyond the compilation of comments and went on

to draft the terms of a return to commercial whaling, which are now to be

voted on at a special intercessional meeting of the IWC to be he held in

Japan in February.

 

In June, when asked by the Dutch newspaper Noordhollands Dagblad about the

existence of the plan and the involvement of the Netherlands' IWC

Commissioner, officials with the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture denied all

knowledge.

 

Subsequently, the terms of von der Assen's draft Revised Management Scheme

were provisionally approved at the July meeting of the IWC in Adelaide,

Australia, one day after a letter was sent to the Chairman of the IWC by

Willem Wouter Wijnstekers, a former Dutch government bureaucrat who is now

Secretary General of CITES. Wijnsteker's July 4 letter sternly informed IWC

Chairman Michael Canny that " the IWC should soon make important progress

towards the adoption of a Revised Management Scheme. This would allow the

Conference of the Parties to CITES to adopt the appropriate management

regime for whale stocks. "

 

Before CITES met in Nairobi, Kenya, in April, Wijnstekers had recommended

re-opening global trade in minke whales and gray whales, in accord with the

wishes of whaling nations Japan and Norway. He was forced to reverse his

recommendation when the majority of CITES member nations pointed out that a

move to re-open trade at CITES could not be made in the absence of a

management plan for whale hunting at the IWC.

 

The popular movement that resulted in the IWC moratorium on commercial whale

hunting, in effect since 1986, is considered the greatest single success of

the international environmental community.

 

" The people of the world are generally unaware that their representatives

have agreed to the proposition that the whales are the property of those

countries that wish to kill them for money, " said Sea Shepherd International

President Paul Watson. " International bureaucrats are preparing to go back

to the slaughter against the scientific evidence that whales should not be

hunted, and against the desire of the majority of the worlds' people that

the current violations of the ban on whale hunting be halted and strictly

enforced, and that humanity never again subject these creatures to

commercial exploitation. "

 

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Sea Shepherd International

P.O. Box 2616

Friday Harbor, WA 98250

(360) 370-5500

http://www.seashepherd.org

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