GBA Slams The Nasty Nippons

It's not only environmental groups targetting Japan's continued "research" whaling in Antarctica. A group of Latin American countries has joined the fray.
In a statement from Argentina's foreign ministry, member countries of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and the Buenos Aires Group (GBA) expressed their "strongest objection to the hunting of whales."
The statement says the whales hunted by the Japanese are species "classified as endangered in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. The GBA notes with serious concern that Japan issued 'special permits' authorising the hunting in the Southern Ocean of 850 Minke whales, 50 Fin whales and 50 Humpback whales."
The GBA said the hunting limits clearly proved the commercial nature of the operation, urging the Japanese government to stop whaling in the sanctuary.
Japan has been hunting whales for claimed "scientific" purposes under a clause in an IWC moratorium in 1986, which bans commercial whaling but permits hunting for scientific research. Its whaling has been widely condemned by the international community, but continues...because of stubborn Japanese pride and face-saving - and to hell with the multi-million dollar financial support bled annually from an unsuspecting Japanese public!

The GBA is comprised of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay.
That LatAm countries are anti-whaling is not new. In Feb.2011, I blogged about Sea Shepherd's 2,000-mile pursuit of the Nisshin Maru factory ship, which nearly had the nasty Nippons entering Chile's Exclusive Economic Zone. Chile passed a law in 2008, making it "illegal to kill, hunt, capture, transport, disembark, commercialise, store or perform any process of transformation on an alive or dead cetacean" in its EEZ. It was ready to take strong measures against the factory ship - what a damn shame it then scurried back to Japan!
Also in that month, many South American IWC member countries joined together to take a strong stand against illegal whaling. They urged Japan to stop its "scientific" whaling in Antarctic waters and to respect sanctuaries: among them - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay.
Yet still the whalers come...