An anti-whaling activist has claimed he was shot by Japanese sailors during a protest in the Antarctic, and would have been killed had he not been wearing a bulletproof vest.
Paul Watson, from the Sea Shepherd organisation, said his fellow environmentalists had been throwing stink bombs onto a whaling ship, the Nisshin Maru, when its Japanese crew opened up with flash grenades and gunfire.
He told Australian radio that he had suddenly felt an impact in his chest. “It bruised my shoulder but it would have hit my heart if I hadn’t had the good fortune to be wearing heavy, uncomfortable Kevlar armour as a fashion statement. As it was, I was quite nonplussed to look down and see a ten-foot harpoon sticking out of my vest," he claimed.
Tokyo’s Foreign Ministry denied that its whaling crews were shooting at environmentalists, saying that the Japanese coastguard aboard the ship had thrown a baseball-sized device which was designed to emit a loud noise. They also pointed out that the sulphurous stench of the protesters’ stink bombs would seem like a welcome breath of fresh air to the ship’s crewmembers, who spent most of their time up to their elbows in reeking whale guts.
Anti-whaling campaigners have been stepping up their activities in the cold waters around Antarctica, and claim the Japanese whalers have been heavy-handed in their handling of the protests. The Japanese government, however, insisted that reports of Kamikaze attacks on protest vessels were unfounded, claiming that their pilots had simply been making close flypasts to check whether they had located a boat or a whale, and unfortunately misjudged the distance.
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