Chile opposes Japanese whaling

The Chilean Senate has just passed a resolution calling on President Michelle Bachelet to send to Japan a "strong opposition" to hunting 1,000 whales in the Antarctic waters for scientific purposes.

A Japanese whaling ship.(Photo: Internet)

Chilean senators also demanded that President Bachelet coordinate with Latin American governments, condemning Japanese whaling in international organizations.

Earlier, information from Greenpeace said that in November 2009, three large fishing vessels had left Japan's Innoshima port, heading for Antarctica with the goal of catching around 1,000 whales.

Since September 2008, the Chilean Parliament has passed a law declaring whale fishing zones in its entire 5.3 million square kilometers of territorial waters and now requires the government to apply this document to practice.

The legislature also called for a ban on the killing of these giant mammals in the international territorial waters of the whale's southernmost holy region.

Two senators Jaime Naranjo and Juan Pablo Letelier, who promoted the law, said since the international community imposed an order to stop commercial hunting for whales in 1986, Japanese fishermen has hunted about 8 million whales in the name for scientific purposes.