Environmental campaigner Paul Watson has been detained in Greenland and is now facing extradition to Japan
Paul Watson, an anti-whaling campaigner and co-founder of Greenpeace, was arrested on Sunday in Greenland based on an international warrant issued by Japan. The activist has been sought by Tokyo for over a decade due to violent altercations with local whalers.
The 73-year-old veteran environmental activist was taken into custody when police raided his ship after it docked in Greenland for resupply.
Watson has already appeared before a district court that will now determine whether he will be extradited to Japan, local police stated in a release.
The Captain Paul Watson Foundation has condemned the potential extradition as a “politically motivated request,” urging the Danish government to release the activist immediately. The Foundation revealed Watson was in the midst of a campaign to intercept the Kangei Maru, a large, newly-built Japanese whaling ship.
The activist’s arrest likely stemmed from an international Red Notice issued against him by Japan in 2012 on charges of causing damage and injury in two incidents with a Japanese whaling vessel in 2010. Although the Red Notice had been initially dropped, Tokyo apparently reinstated it quietly, the Foundation suggested.
“This development comes as a surprise since the Foundation’s lawyers had reported that the Red Notice had been withdrawn. However, it appears that Japan made the notice confidential to facilitate Paul’s travel for the purpose of making an arrest,” the Foundation explained.
The group also alleged that Watson’s arrest was specifically timed to coincide with the launch of the Kangei Maru. The new, massive $47-million whaling vessel was commissioned earlier this year and is currently operating in the North Pacific.
Commercial whaling was banned by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1986, but Japan was allowed to continue hunting a small number of whales each year in the Antarctic for “scientific” purposes. In 2014, the International Court of Justice ordered Tokyo to cease these hunts, ruling that they were not genuine scientific endeavors but rather a disguise for commercial whaling.
Japan eventually withdrew from the IWC four years later, ending the Antarctic “scientific” expeditions while resuming commercial whaling in its domestic waters. Tokyo has long argued that whaling and consuming marine mammal meat were integral parts of the country’s “culture.”