Britain should give up Chagos Islands: UN court

Yahoo – AFP, Danny KEMP, Jan HENNOP, February 25, 2019

Britain allowed a few of the evicted Chagossian islanders back for a brief visit in 

2006 (AFP Photo/STRINGER)

The Hague (AFP) - Britain should give up control of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean "as rapidly as possible", the UN's top court said Monday in a decades-old row with Mauritius over an archipelago that is home to a huge US airbase.

The International Court of Justice said in a legal opinion that Britain had illegally split the islands from Mauritius before independence in 1968, after which the entire population of islanders was evicted.

Mauritius and the exiled Chagossians reacted with delight to the "historic" opinion delivered by judges in The Hague, which is non-binding but will carry heavy symbolic and political weight.

Britain however defended its hold on the islands, saying the Diego Garcia military base, which has been used to bomb Iraq and Afghanistan, protected people around the world.

"The United Kingdom's continued administration of the Chagos Archipelago constitutes a wrongful act," chief judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said.

"The United Kingdom is under an obligation to bring an end to its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible, thereby allowing Mauritius to complete the decolonisation of its territory."

The UN General Assembly in 2017 adopted a resolution presented by Mauritius and backed by African countries asking the ICJ to offer legal advice on the island chain's fate and the legality of the deportations.

'So happy'

Colonial power Britain split off the islands from Mauritius -- which lies around 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) away -- three years before Port Louis gained independence in 1968. It also paid Mauritius three million pounds.

Between 1968 and 1973 around 2,000 Chagos islanders were evicted, to Britain, Mauritius and the Seychelles, to make way for a military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands. The evictions were described in a British diplomatic cable at the time as the removal of "some few Tarzans and Man Fridays".

The Chagos Islanders have already taken their battle through the courts in Britain,
where their supporters include the current leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn 
(second from the right in this 2007 photo) (AFP Photo/ADRIAN DENNIS)

Diego Garcia is now under lease to the United States and played a key strategic role in the Cold War before being used as a staging ground for US bombing campaigns against Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s.

Olivier Bancoult, chairman of the Mauritius-based Chagos Refugees Group, told reporters outside court that he was "so happy".

"It is a big victory against an injustice done by the British government for many years. We people have been suffering for many years -- I am so lucky today," he said.

Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth hailed it as a " historic moment for Mauritius and all its people".

"Our territorial integrity will now be made complete, and when that occurs, the Chagossians and their descendants will finally be able to return home," he said in a statement.

The ICJ opinion comes as a stunning blow to London in a case that goes to the heart of historic issues of decolonisation and current questions about Britain's place in the world as it prepares to leave the European Union.

Mauritius' lawyer Philippe Sands said there was "no wiggle room" in the judges' view and that Britain would resist pressure to comply.

"I suspect the United Kingdom will say to itself, what resistance can we put up to moving forward -- and particularly in the context of Brexit, as the United Kingdom finds itself a little bit isolated in the world," he told reporters outside court.

Britain's foreign ministry rejected the court's opinion.

"The defence facilities on the British Indian Ocean Territory help to protect people here in Britain and around the world from terrorist threats, organised crime and piracy," the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said in a statement.

'Shameful' evictions

When judges heard the case in September, Mauritius argued that it was illegal for Britain to have broken up its territory while it was still the colonial power.

Britain, while apologising for the "shameful" way it evicted thousands of islanders, insisted Mauritius was wrong to have brought the case to the ICJ.

The United States meanwhile said the court had a "duty" not to take a position on the row.

The Chagos Islanders have already taken their battle through the courts in Britain, where their supporters included the current Labour opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

The legal opinion is only the 28th since the ICJ was set up in 1946 in the wake of World War II to provide a tribunal to resolve disputes between UN member states.

Previously such opinions include one on Israel's West Bank barrier in 2004, which judges said was illegal, and declaring legal Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2010.c

World court sinks Bolivia bid for sea access

Yahoo – AFP, Jan HENNOP and Danny KEMP, 1 October 2018

Bolivia -- South America's poorest country -- became landlocked after losing a
four-year war against Chile at the end of the 19th century, forfeiting territory and
 its access to the Pacific coast

The International Court of Justice on Monday ruled against landlocked Bolivia in a row with Chile over access to the Pacific Ocean that dates back to the 19th century.

Bolivia lost its prized route to the sea in a 1879-1883 war with Chile, and Santiago has rejected every attempt since then by its smaller and poorer neighbour to win back its coastline.

La Paz took Santiago to the top UN court in The Hague in 2013 to try to force it to the negotiating table over the maritime spat, a long-running strain on relations between the two South American countries.

"The court by 12 votes to three finds that the Republic of Chile did not undertake a legal obligation to negotiate a sovereign access for the... state of Bolivia," judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said at the end of a judgement that took an hour and 20 minutes to read out.

The judge said, however, he hoped that "with willingness on the part of both parties meaningful negotiations can be undertaken".

Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales -- who has used the issue to boost support at home as he seeks a fourth term in office -- attended the court in person for the verdict.

"Bolivia will never give up" its claim, Morales told reporters afterwards. "The people of the world know that Bolivia had an invasion and we had our sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean taken away from us."

Bolivia says regaining its territory which comprises of several hundred kilometres

of coastline along the northern tip of Chile will stimulate growth and development

'False expectations'

The ICJ was set up after World War II to rule in disputes between UN member states. The court's findings are binding and cannot be appealed, although it has no real power to enforce them.

Chile and Bolivia have had no diplomatic relations since 1978 when Bolivia's last major attempt to negotiate a passage to the Pacific broke down in acrimony.

The War of the Pacific pitted Bolivia and Peru on one side against Chile on the other, and saw battles fought in the Pacific Ocean, the Andes mountains and even in the Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world.

Decades of post-independence border tensions in South America were finally ignited by a dispute over Bolivian attempts to tax a Chilean company mining saltpetre, a mineral used in fertilizer that was at the time replacing the traditional use of guano, the excrement of seabirds and bats.

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera lashed out at his Bolivian counterpart as he hailed the ICJ's decision.

"President Evo Morales of Bolivia has created false expectations in his own people, and has created great frustration in his own people," he said in a statement.

"We have lost five valuable years of the healthy and necessary relationship that Chile needs with all neighbouring countries, including Bolivia."

Based in The Hague, the International Court of Justice was set up in 1945

to rule on border and territorial disputes between nations

'The struggle continues!'

Morales has weaponised the dispute to boost his popularity at home where the importance of the issue is underscored by the fact that Bolivia still has a navy despite lack of access to the sea.

A small crowd of Bolivian protesters waved flags, played pan pipes and banged drums outside the Peace Palace for the verdict, shouting "The struggle continues!"

"Of course we are sad about the decision. We’re a small country, but we’re not Switzerland or Luxembourg. We need access to export and import our goods,” said Gabriella Telleria, 50, one of the protesters.

“We asked for justice and we didn’t get it,” she told AFP.

Bolivia says regaining the 400 kilometres (260 miles) of coastline along the northern tip of Chile that it lost in the war would stimulate growth and development in South America's poorest country.

Bolivian activists said the loss of the Chuquicamata mine, the world's largest open-pit copper mine which is situated in the disputed area, has also badly hit the country's indigenous peoples.

For its part, Santiago says the border is based on a 1904 peace treaty signed with Bolivia in the wake of the War of the Pacific and therefore must be respected.

Meanwhile, Chile has opened its own case against Bolivia over the Silala waterway, which flows into the Atacama desert and which La Paz has threatened to divert.

#UPDATE The International Court of Justice rejects a bid by Bolivia to force Chile to the negotiating table for access to the Pacific Ocean in a row dating back to the 19th century https://t.co/5TjZh9MFhB pic.twitter.com/i1BiinaE3s

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 1, 2018

Top UN court draws new borders for Costa Rica, Nicaragua

Yahoo – AFP, Jan Hennop and Toni Cerda, February 2, 2018

Experts examine the damage to a tract of land lying in a border area that
has caused years of tension between Costa Rica and Nicaragua (AFP)

The Hague (AFP) - The UN's highest court drew new maritime boundaries between Costa Rica and Nicaragua on Friday seeking to end a decades-long frontier dispute, and ordered Managua to pay compensation for environmental damage.

In a multi-pronged judgement, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) also ordered Nicaragua to remove a military camp near the river San Juan -- which divides the two neighbours -- and which the Hague-based ICJ said "violated Costa Rica's sovereignty."

Friday's judgements resulted from a string of disputes between the two Central American neighbours before the ICJ, set up in 1945 to rule on border and territorial disputes between nations.

Apart from a ruling on the disputed San Juan wetlands area, Costa Rica also asked the ICJ to set its maritime boundaries on both its western Pacific Ocean coast and in the Caribbean Sea to the east.

Environmental damage

On Friday morning, the ICJ judges ruled that Managua must pay San Jose almost $380,000 for environmental damage and to compensate for the costs of efforts to restore the area on the San Juan River.

"Costa Rica has sovereignty over the whole of Isla Portillos up to the point at which the right bank of the San Juan River reaches the low-water mark of the coast of the Caribbean Sea," judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said.

The Somali-born judge was referring to a slither of land on Costa Rica's disputed northern border, where Nicaragua set up a military camp in 2010, dredged the San Juan River and dug three channels.

The judge ordered Managua to pay the compensation before April 2 for the damage to the land, known in Costa Rica as Isla Portillos and in Nicaragua as Harbour Head.

But the amount fell far short of the $6.7 million demanded by Costa Rica in the ICJ's first-ever compensation ruling for environmental damage.

The judges then drew maritime borders between the two countries in both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean along "delimitation lines."

'Spectacular' ruling

Costa Rican ambassador Sergio Ugalde said San Juan was happy with the marathon set of judgements, calling the ruling on maritime boundaries "spectacular."

Nicaragua and Costa Rica first held negotiations in 1976 to try to reach an agreement

on the border which broadly follows the San Juan river (AFP Photo/YURI CORTEZ)

"Although a little less than what Costa Rica had estimated, the decision this morning (too) remains a very important economic remedy," he added.

Costa Rica now wanted to normalise relations with its northern neighbour, Ugalde told AFP.

Nicaraguan ambassador Carlos Arguello also said his country was pleased with the outcome, calling it "a fair assessment".

"There is no longer a major problem, or there should be no problem to have normal relations between Nicaragua and Costa Rica," Arguello said.

The new rulings came more than two years after the ICJ found that Costa Rica had sovereignty over Isla Portillos, basing its ruling in part on an 1858 treaty.

In December 2015, the court reproached Managua for violating San Jose's right to navigation in the waters and ordered the two countries to negotiate an amount of compensation.

But the neighbours failed to reach a deal and the issue trundled back to the ICJ so judges could set the compensation amount.

The two countries first held negotiations in 1976 to try to reach an agreement on their border which broadly follows the San Juan river, but talks dragged on.

Costa Rica brought the case to the ICJ in 2014 saying it had "exhausted its diplomatic means" to resolve the row.

Sea Shepherd finds Japanese ship 'with slaughtered whale'

Yahoo – AFP, January 15, 2017

A photo released by activist group Sea Shepherd on January 15, 2017 purportedly
shows a dead minke whale onboard Japanese ship the Nisshin Maru in Antarctic
waters (AFP Photo/Glenn LOCKITCH)

A Japanese ship has been caught with a slaughtered whale in the Antarctic in defiance of an international court decision against Tokyo's hunts, activist group Sea Shepherd said Sunday.

The conservationist organisation -- whose two vessels departed Australia last month for the Southern Ocean to disrupt the hunt -- said it spotted the Nisshin Maru in the Australian whale sanctuary around the nation's Antarctic territory.

The Japanese fleet set sail on November 18 last year in defiance of a worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling and international opposition.

Sea Shepherd released photographs of a dead minke whale on the deck of the Nisshin Maru, a factory ship, adding that the vessel's crew covered the carcass with a tarp when its helicopter approached.

The dead whale is the first to be documented since the ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), said Sea Shepherd. It has spent more than a decade harassing Japanese harpoon ships during the Southern Hemisphere summer.

"The fact that the Japanese crew went to cover up their harpoons and the dead minke whale on deck just shows that they know what they're doing is wrong," the captain of Sea Shepherd's MY Steve Irwin, Wyanda Lublink, said in a statement.

A photo released by activist group Sea Shepherd on January 15, 2017 purportedly

 shows a covered dead minke whale onboard Japanese ship the Nisshin Maru in

Antarctic waters (AFP Photo/Glenn LOCKITCH, Glenn LOCKITCH)

The news came a day after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met his Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull in Sydney, with their talks focusing on trade and defence.

Japan is a signatory to the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on whaling in force since 1986. But it exploits a loophole allowing whales to be killed for the purposes of "scientific research".

Australia's Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg said in a statement his government was "deeply disappointed" Japan had returned to whaling in the Southern Ocean this summer.

"We will continue our efforts in the International Whaling Commission to strongly oppose commercial whaling and so-called 'scientific' whaling, uphold the moratorium on commercial whaling and promote whale conservation," he added.

In 2014 the United Nations' ICJ ordered Tokyo to end the Antarctic hunt, saying it found permits issued by Japan were "not for purposes of scientific research".

Japan cancelled its 2014-15 hunt after the ruling, but restarted it the following year under a new programme with a two-thirds cut in the target catch number -- saying the fresh plan was genuinely scientific.

Tokyo claims it is trying to prove the whale population is large enough to sustain a return to commercial hunting. But the meat from what it calls scientific research often ends up on dinner tables.

No one was available for comment at Japan's Fisheries Agency.

Costa Rica wins bitter territory row with Nicaragua

Yahoo – AFP, Ariela Navarro and Nicolas Delaunay, December 16, 2015

The San Juan River is the natural border between Nicaragua and
Costa Rica (AFP Photo/Yuri Cortez)

The Hague (AFP) - Costa Rica won a lingering, bitter territorial row with Nicaragua Wednesday when a top UN court ruled it had sovereignty over a small patch of wetlands on the river San Juan.

The court "finds that Costa Rica has sovereignty over the disputed territory as defined by the court," the judges from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled, in a statement read to the hearing.

Basing its ruling in part on an 1858 treaty between the two countries, the court also reproached Managua for violating San Jose's right to navigation in the waters which form their joint border.

By "excavating" three channels in the river and "establishing a military presence on Costa Rican territory, Nicaragua has violated the territory and sovereignty" of its neighbour, the 16-judge panel found.

A satisfied Costa Rica hailed the decision, and while Nicaragua lamented the loss of the territory it took heart from some sharp criticism of its neighbour for building a road along the banks.

"The ICJ resolution... constitutes total vindication of the national viewpoint on the integrity of our territory," Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis told a news conference in San Jose.

He said he hoped a "horizon of dialogue" would now start between the countries.

Nicaragua's deputy foreign minister, Cesar Vega, told reporters in Managua that his country "will abide by the verdict".

Tensions have flared for years between the two Central American nations over the land -- called the Isla Portillos by San Jose and Harbour Head by Managua.

The fight first reached the ICJ in 2010 when Costa Rica complained Nicaragua's army had occupied a three square kilometre (just over one square mile) block near the mouth of the river San Juan as it flows into the Caribbean.

Nicaragua maintained the territory historically belonged to it, and in a separate 2011 counter-claim to the ICJ argued that Costa Rica was causing environmental damage by building a road next to the waterway.

President of the International Court of Justice Ronny Abraham (2R) looks at 

a document during the case on the border dispute between Costa Rica and

Nicaragua, in the Hague on December 16, 2015 (AFP Photo/Bas Czerwinski)

Turning the page

The case has ping-ponged back and forth in the International Court of Justice -- the UN's highest court founded in 1945 to rule on border and territorial disputes between nations.

Costa Rica had maintained in a hearing earlier this year that Nicaragua had "invaded" the tiny stretch of territory on its northeast coast.

And while the 16 judges did not go so far, the ICJ did award Costa Rica compensation for "material damages caused by Nicaragua's unlawful activities on Costa Rican territory."

The two countries now have 12 months to negotiate a fair settlement, otherwise the court warned it would be prepared at the request of one of the parties to step in and set the amount of compensation due.

"Nicaragua has lost 250 hectares of wetlands that we considered to be ours," said Nicaragua's ambassador to the Netherlands, Carlos Arguello Gomez.

But he insisted his country now wanted to "turn the page. This ruling will help ties between our two countries. When things are cleared up, then problems go away and that is the most important thing."

He also welcomed the judges' ruling in the 2011 case brought by Nicaragua, which found that San Jose had failed to carry out an environmental impact assessment when it built the road that veers close to the river.

However, the judges refused to award any damages to Nicaragua, saying the ruling in its favour was "satisfaction" enough and Managua had failed to prove the road had caused "significant transboundary harm".

A third dispute between the countries is also before the ICJ, as Costa Rica has asked it to rule on their maritime borders.

The court has no power to enforce its rulings, but two countries must agree before a case can be brought before the tribunal.

Japan's whaling fleet sets sail for the Antarctic

In spite of global outrage, Japan's whaling fleet has set out for the Antarctic to resume a decades-old whale hunt. Japan aims to take more than 300 whales in its "scientific whaling" program.

Deutsche Welle, 1 Nov 2015

Last year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Japan's whaling in the Southern Ocean should stop, and an International Whaling Commission (IWC) panel said in April that Japan had yet to demonstrate a need for "lethal sampling" as part of scientific research.

However, Tokyo, which vowed at the time to resume its "scientific whaling" program starting with the 2015/2016 season, retooled its hunt plan to cut the number of minke whales it intends to take to 333, down by two-thirds from previous hunts.

Japan has long maintained that most whale species are not endangered and that eating whale is part of its traditional food culture. Making use of a loophole in international whaling regulations, it began what it calls "scientific whaling" in 1987, a year after a global whaling moratorium took effect.

'A happy day'

"Last year, regrettably, the ICJ made its ruling and we were unable to take whales," said Tomoaki Nakao, the mayor of the western city of Shimonoseki, which is both home to much of Japan's whaling fleet and part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's election district.

"There's nothing as happy as this day," he told the fleet's crew at a ceremony prior to their departure.

The ships set sail shortly before noon, with family members and officials waving from shore. The hunt is expected to last until March.

Conservationists' anger

Australia and New Zealand have led criticism of the resumption of Japan's whaling operations, with both expressing disappointment.

Sea Shepherd activists have in the past clashed with Japanese whaling ships

"It's not scientific research, it's straight up commercial whaling, and it's been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice," said Nathaniel Pelle from Greenpeace Australia.

Environmentalists from Sea Shepherd Australia, a conservation organization dedicated to protecting marine wildlife and habitats, have said they will pursue the Japanese fleet and will attempt to intervene in any slaughter of the animals.

av/tj (AFP, Reuters)

Pope Francis urges dialogue on Bolivia-Chile sea dispute

On a visit to the city of La Paz, Pope Francis has called for dialogue between Chile and Bolivia over a long-running border dispute. His time in the city, among the highest on Earth, was limited on medical grounds.

Deutsche Welle, 9 July 2015

Francis landed in La Paz early on Wednesday evening, welcomed by choirs who sang in the indigenous Aymara language.

He was met by Bolivian President Evo Morales, a champion of Latin America's radical left and Bolivia's first indigenous president. Francis greeted Bolivians with a message of inclusion, continuing the central theme of his three-nation tour of South America.

He praised the country for taking important steps to make its poor and indigenous less marginalized. Bolivia is South America's poorest nation.

Morales handed Francis - whose language often echoes that of the leftist Liberation Theology movement - two politically-charged gifts. One was a crucifix carved into a Communist hammer and sickle. The other was a copy of "The Book of the Sea," - about the loss of Bolivia's access to the sea in the War of the Pacific with Peru between 1879 and 1883.

'Raise bridges, not walls'

In a speech to civil authorities in La Paz later, Francis urged countries to improve diplomatic relations "in order to avoid conflicts between sister peoples and advance frank and open dialogue about their problems."

"I'm thinking about the sea here," said the pope, referring to the ongoing dispute between the two countries which is set to be ruled upon by the International Court of Justice by the end of the year. "Dialogue is indispensable. Instead of raising walls, we need to be building bridges."

Short stay at altitude

Although the pope had praised Bolivia earlier, he also denounced a pervasive "atmosphere of inequality," and lamented that welcome economic growth had "opened the door to corruption."

With La Paz standing more than 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) above sea level, extra oxygen tanks were on hand for Francis, who lost a lung during his youth.

Aboard the flight from Ecuador, where the Argentine pope began his "homecoming" tour to South America, Francis was said to have drunk a tea made of a mix of coca leaves, chamomile and anise seeds to ward off the effects of altitude.

However, medical considerations meant that the pontiff's time in La Paz was limited to four hours, before he flew on to Santa Cruz in Bolivia's central lowlands, for a two-day stay.

rc/jr (AFP, AP, Reuters)

Experts reject Japan's new whaling plan

International Whaling Committee say proposal to resume hunt in Southern Ocean offers no scientific evidence that it is necessary

The Guardian, Justin McCurry in Tokyo, Tuesday 14 April 2015

A handout image supplied by Sea Shepherd Australia in January 2013 shows
 three minke whales on the deck of the Japanese Ship Nisshin Maru.
Photograph: Tim Watters/EPA

Japan’s hopes of resuming its whale hunts in the Southern Ocean have suffered a setback after International Whaling Committee experts said its latest plan offered no scientific justification for the slaughter.

The IWC panel said Japan’s revised programme, known as Newrep-A, did not contain enough information for experts to determine whether Japan needed to kill whales to fulfil two key objectives: calculating the size of populations necessary for a return to sustainable commercial hunting, and gaining a better understanding of the Antarctic marine ecosystem.

“With the information presented in the proposal, the panel was not able to determine whether lethal sampling is necessary to achieve the two major objectives,” the IWC experts’ report said. “Therefore the current proposal does not demonstrate the need for lethal sampling to achieve those objectives.”

Japanese officials have been working on a revised whaling programme since last year when the international court of justice in The Hague ordered an immediate halt to its Antarctic hunts after concluding that they were not, as Japan had claimed, being conducted for scientific research.

The UN court’s ruling was in response to a landmark legal challenge to the Southern Ocean hunts by Australia, which claimed Japan was using science as a cover for commercial whaling.

Under the moratorium on commercial whaling Japan is allowed to sell meat from the “scientific” hunts on the open market, although consumption has fallen dramatically since the postwar years when it was a rare source of protein.

Tokyo hoped that its revised plan, involving the killing of fewer whales, would pave the way for the resumption of the Antarctic hunts, possibly by the end of this year.

Its whaling fleet recently returned from the Southern Ocean, although it had not planned to kill any whales, in accordance with the ICJ ruling.

“The ICJ ruling ensured that for the first season in more than a century whales in the southern hemisphere were not hunted for commercial purposes,” said Patrick Ramage, global whale programme director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

“It is disappointing … that Japan’s fisheries bureaucrats would defy the world’s highest court and try to restart illegal whaling in the Southern Ocean.”

In its reworked plan Japan proposed an annual cull of up to 333 minke whales over the next 12 years, down from more than 900 a year previously. The total cull over that period would reach 3,996 whales, compared with the 13,000 whales it has killed since the IWC ban on commercial whaling came into effect in 1987.

Japan has long claimed that it needs to conduct “lethal research” to better understand whale populations’ migratory, feeding and reproduction habits with a view to a return to commercial whaling. It argues that many whale species, including minke, are not endangered.

Japanese officials said they would provide more information before the IWC’s scientific committee meets in San Diego next month. “I believe that we’ll move forward with the aim of resuming whaling around the end of the year,” the country’s commissioner to the IWC, Joji Morishita, told reporters, although he did not rule out changes to the proposal.

Morishita said Japan took the panel’s report seriously but added: “They haven’t unilaterally said that it’s no good; neither have they come out on the other side with ‘Go ahead, do whatever research you want to do.’”

Environmental campaigners welcomed the IWC panel’s decision. “[The findings] reiterate and underline the concern of the international community: you don’t need to kill whales in order to study them,” said Claire Bass, UK director of the Humane Society International.

“It has long been clear that Japan’s large-scale whaling operations are driven by politicians, not scientists, and serve no useful conservation or scientific need. This latest report from the IWC review panel essentially sends Japan back to the drawing board as it has failed to make a case for the need to kill whales in the name of science.”

Related Article:

Japan court blocks restarting of two nuclear reactors

Payouts promised to Fijian veterans of British nuclear testing

Fijian victims of British nuclear testing in 1958 are to get compensation, according to Fiji's government. Seventy military personnel were taken to Christmas Island, a test site in the Pacific, more than 50 years ago.

Deutsche Welle, 27 Jan 2015

Fiji's government said on Tuesday that military veterans exposed to radiation 56 years ago or their families are to get compensation for subsequent health problems, including cancer of the blood.

The Fiji Sun newspaper quoted the country's National Security and Defense Minister Timoci Natuva as saying Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama would outline compensation details on Friday.

Maleli Naigulegu, now aged 80 and one of the surviving veterans who has campaigned for decades for assistance, told the Fiji Sun it was "the greatest news."

"At last my group has been recognized," the former laboratory technician said.

During British Cold War nuclear testing in 1957 and 1958, some 70 Fijian military personnel were sent to Christmas Island on board New Zealand naval ships.

The island is now part of the Pacific nation of Kiribati.

Naigulegu said the Fijian personnel were not briefed on the purpose of their deployment to the test zone.

Several Pacific test zones

Last year, a lawsuit was filed at the International Court of Justice by another Pacific nation, the Marshall Islands, where the US conducted 60 nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958.

The Marshalls, with a population of 70,000, became fully independent in 1986 after being administered in the past by the United States.

The lawsuit seeks to hold the US and eight other nuclear-weapon nations accountable for breaching or allowing violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Nuclear weapons have been used twice - at Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan by the US, near the close of World War Two in the Pacific region.

Several thousand tests

From 1946 until the 1990s nuclear powers conducted more than 2,000 nuclear tests worldwide.

A French 'test' over Mururoa in 1971

The United State's largest was at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in 1954. The former Soviet Union's largest test "Tsar Bomba" took place in 1961.

France conducted tests in French Polynesia in the 1970s and 1990s, prompting strong protests from New Zealand, Australia and environmental rights group Greenpeace.

Last year, remote southern Australian land used by Britain to test atomic bombs in the 1950s and 1960s was handed back to its Aboriginal owners, the Maralinga Tjarutja, after attempts to decontaminate it.

Around 16,300 atomic bombs remain, held mainly by the US and Russia, despite the various versions of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

Some 70,000 to 80,000 had existed at the height of the Cold War.

ipj/jlw (AFP, IPS)

A huge dome is shown in 1980 covering a crater left by one of the 43

nuclear blasts on Runit Island, in the Marshall Islands, the fallout from

which is expected to last 25,000 years (US Defence Nuclear Agency/AFP)

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Nations vote against Japanese whaling, agree to tighten scrutiny

Countries at an international whaling conference have voted against Japan's plans to resume scientific whaling, and increase their scrutiny of the controversial practice. Japan plans to go ahead despite the backlash.

Deutsche Welle, 18 Sep 2014

Nations meeting on the closing day of the International Whaling Commission's (IWC) meeting in Portoroz, Slovenia agreed to tighten the review process over Japan's whaling program.

In a 35-20 vote, with five abstentions, the nations said Japan should abide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that found Japan's government-sanctioned whaling to be illegal because it is not for scientific purposes.

Thursday's meeting IWC meeting was the first since the ruling by the UN's highest court in March.

Immediately after the IWC's resolution was adopted, Japan said it would begin a new "scientific" whale hunting program in the Antarctic in 2015.

The IWC's scientific committee investigates all proposals for scientific whaling, but Japan does not require its approval to conduct its own missions.

Japan killed more than 250 minke whales in the Antarctic during the 2013-14 season, and 103 the year before that. It also killed 132 whales on "scientific" hunts in 2013 in the Pacific Northwest, and 92 off the Japanese coast.

Countries voting in favor of Thursday's resolution included Britain, the United States, Australia, Brazil, Mexico and New Zealand. Along with Japan, those against it included Russia, Cambodia, Colombia, Guinea and Iceland, which also conducts whaling missions.

dr/sb (AFP, AP)