March could be the month where the future of whales is changed forever.

In St. Petersburg, Florida the International Whaling Commission (IWC) just finished a meeting where they discussed a proposal to resume commercial whaling a final vote will take place in the coming months.

And in Tokyo, the Japanese government just resumed its efforts to silence us from exposing the true nature of Japanese “scientific whaling.”

Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, Greenpeace Japan activists, are currently standing trial for theft and trespass. What they really did was expose a scandal of government corruption in the whaling industry. They’ve already been held for 26 days - 23 of them without charge - interrogated daily for up to ten hours, often strapped to chairs and without access to counsel. Now they face up to ten years in jail for doing what any honest citizen should do - expose corruption.
The charges against these two incredibly brave activists are for allegedly intercepting a box of whale meat and presenting it as evidence to the Public Prosecutor. The box of whale meat had been illicitly removed by crew of a whaling factory ship, marked as "cardboard" and shipped to a private address. Tracked by our activists, it was intercepted and turned over as evidence of corruption at the heart of the whaling operation.

It’s an outrage that these brave activists are treated as criminals for defending whales, while the U.S. Administration and other IWC members consider rewarding the real criminals by legalizing their slaughter of whales.

I can only guess that whaling nations like Japan, Norway and Iceland and some members of the IWC believe that Greenpeace and our supporters can be bullied by excessive prosecution or sidelined by simply removing the moratorium.

Have they got it wrong! Greenpeace was one of the first groups to take action and highlight the plight of the whales over 35 years ago, and we'll continue to defend these amazing creatures for as long as it takes.

Source - Greenpeace mail shot.