Ian Campbell Calls for Boycott of Japanese Bid for the 2016 Olympics

Sea Shepherd Advisor Calls Japanese Dolphin Slaughter a “Travesty”

Former Australian Senator and Environment Minister Ian Campbell is calling for a boycott of Tokyo's bid for the 2016 Olympics, in protest at Japan's alleged annual slaughter of 23,000 dolphins.

Ian Campbell is now an advisor to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

From the Melbourne Age

Boycott Japan Olympics bid: ex-minister

July 15, 2009 - Former federal environment minister Ian Campbell wants a boycott of Tokyo's bid for the 2016 Olympics, in protest at Japan's alleged annual slaughter of 23,000 dolphins.

Allowing Japan to host the Summer Games only 300 nautical miles from Taiji, the Japanese port where the killings occur, would be a "travesty", Mr Campbell says.

"Japan is trying to pitch its bid for the 2016 Summer Games as a `Green Olympics' whilst just across the bay one of the greatest acts of environmental vandalism on our planet paints the waters red," he said in a statement on Wednesday.

The dolphin killing allegedly occurs every September off Taiji on Japan's south coast.

Mr Campbell was environment minister from 2004 to 2007 in the Howard government and joined the International Advisory Board for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in January 2008.

An anti-whaling activist, he rejected Japan's claims their whaling efforts were scientific, calling them `sick' and `absurd' in a 2005 ABC interview.

The Sea Shepherd Society says the Taiji dolphin killings have been filmed by the Oceanic Preservation Society for a documentary called The Cove, to be released in Australia on August 20.

Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Chicago have also entered bids to host the 2016 Olympics. A decision will be made at the International Olympic Committee's meeting in Copenhagen on October 2 this year.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society first exposed the horrific slaughter of the dolphins in 2003 when our photographs and videos of the massacre appeared on the front pages of newspapers and on the evening news of media around the world. That was the same year that Allison Lance and Alex Cornelissen were jailed for three weeks for saving the lives of 15 dolphins and pilot whales by cutting the nets at Taiji Bay.

Since then the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has been working with Surfers for Cetaceans and the Oceanic Preservation Society to end the slaughter of 23,000 dolphins by Japanese fishermen every year.

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