Caribbean Nations Applaud Whaling Commission

Caribbean Nations Applaud Whaling Commission

The unprecedented move by the International Whaling Commission of banning an offensive document published by extremist anti-whaling Non-Governmental Organizations must be applauded, the Commissioners from the Caribbean nations said today in a joint statement.

“Caribbean nations were deeply distressed and offended by the racist editions of the extreme anti-whaling publication ‘ECO’ and believe the Whaling Commission did the only right thing by banning all copies and threatening to revoke the status of the organizations that publicly supported it,” the Commissioners said.

“ECO” devoted the issues to abusing the Caribbean nations, Japan and other pro-whaling countries, and individuals who made up the delegations from those countries.

“Small island nations that are members of the Whaling Commission are always subjected to pressure from larger countries and extremist NGOs, like those that published this document. Caribbean members have been threatened with boycotts of our banana exports, boycotts on our tourism industry all because we support the principle of sustainable use,” they said.

“Some of these organizations originally paid for the membership of Caribbean nations into the Whaling Commission and used their people to act as our Commissioners. That’s how they got the moratorium through,” the Commissioners said.

However, the islands evicted and replaced the false commissioners with Caribbean people when they discovered they were not acting in the national interests of the islands nor adhering to the principles of sustainable utilization. The Commissioners said that, since then: “We are continually subjected to abuse, racism and other terrible means from these groups because we support the rights of all people to utilize whale resources for food, just like we do in the Caribbean.”

In its statement, the Whaling Commission today said the ECO publications “contained language which was … extremely offensive impugning the Sovereignty of a number of Contracting Governments to this Commission and containing significant factual inaccuracies.”

It called on ECO to print a formal apology to be distributed during the course of the annual meeting. “In addition to this apology,” the Whaling Commission continued, “the publications of this organisation may no longer [be] circulated within the confines of our meeting halls and associated areas for the remainder of this annual meeting.”

The Whaling Commission condemned the publications and considered that they constituted an abuse of privileges accorded to accredited observers. The Commission called on the extremist organizations listed as sponsors to ECO to “formally disassociate themselves from the offending statements” and vowed to call into question their observer status if they did not.

The organizations that contributed and supported the offensive publication were:

American Cetacean Society, Animal Welfare Institute, Campaign Whale, Canadian Marine Environment Protection Society, Cetacean Society International, Cousteau Society, Dolphin Connection, Earth Island Institute, Earthtrust, ECCEA, Greenpeace, Humane Society International, The Humane Society of the US, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), International Wildlife Coalition, Natural Resources Defense Council, Orcalab/Pacific Orca Society, Robin des Bois, RSPCA, Swiss Coalition for the Protection of Whales, Swiss Working Group for the Protection of Marine Mammals and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

This statement issued by the IWC Commissioners from Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, St Nevis and Kitts, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

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