The trial date for the Tokyo Two is finally approaching after months of drawn-out pre-court processes.
The hearing will commence on 15 February and is set to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, trial heard in the Aomori court, in northern mainland Japan.
Otherwise known as the “Tokyo Two”, Junichi and Toru are the Greenpeace activists arrested after they exposed corruption in Japan’s whaling industry.
Although it’s the anti-whaling activists that are facing the charges, we want to see Japanese whaling put in the dock. The Japanese public in particular needs to see what really happens under the guise of the Japanese government’s so-called “scientific” whaling program.
We’ve had welcome news that key witnesses for the case are going to be allowed to be heard.
This means that we get to call the original whistleblower, three whaling crew members and Professor Dirk Voorhoof, an international expert on freedom of expression.
David McNeill, an academic and journalist living and working in Tokyo, has written this article for The Indpendent, an English newspaper, which you can read here.
The Australian newspaper recently published an opinion piece from one of the Tokyo Two, Junichi Sato. In the article, Junichi makes the case for taking the anti-whaling campaign to Japan itself.
