Hacktivists claim to have crashed Shinzo Abe’s website in protest at Japan’s Antarctic mission to kill whales for ‘research’

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Hackers have claimed to have disabled the website of the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in protest at his country’s decision to resuming its whaling programme in the Southern ocean, in defiance of international opinion.



A tweet, purportedly from a member of the loose collective of hacktivists, Anonymous, and addressed to Abe’s Twitter account, said: “Whaling is not cultural right! Your website is #TangoDown!”

The tweet was accompanied by a screenshot showing that connections to the site were not working. The website appeared to have returned to normal late on Thursday afternoon.

The government’s top spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, acknowledged that the site had been inaccessible since early in the day.

Another Anonymous Twitter account said the group had not been responsible for the attack on Abe’s site. Instead, the action appears to have been taken by a sympathiser, operating under the Anonymous umbrella, angered by Japan’s slaughter of whales and dolphins.

Anonymous has, however, claimed responsibility for previous attacks on Japanese websites in protest at the country’s whaling programme. The group was also linked to recent hacks against five government websites in Iceland, including those of the prime minister and the environment ministry, in protest at its whaling activities.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hackers claim to have crashed Shinzo Abe’s official website in protest against Japan’s plans to hunt whales. Photograph: Shuji Kajiyama/AP

Japan prompted anger last week when its whaling fleet left port for the Antarctic, where it plans to kill hundreds of whales over the next few months for what it claims is scientific research.

Japan’s fisheries agency said the fleet would conduct “lethal research”, despite a UN court ruling last year that the hunts were a cover for commercial whaling and have no proven scientific merit. The UN called for the hunts to be stopped immediately.

This week Australia and New Zealand led an international protest against the resumption of the slaughter in the Southern ocean that Canberra regards as a whale sanctuary. Japan, however, does not recognise the area’s sanctuary status.

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The New Zealand prime minister, John Key, said a “strong” letter of protest had been delivered to Japan’s government signed by 33 countries, including the US and European Union member states.

In a statement, Key said: “We consider that there is no scientific basis for the slaughter of whales and strongly urge the government of Japan not to allow it to go ahead.”

The Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said Canberra would continue to put pressure on Japan to end the hunts. “We are working with other like-minded nations to build international consensus against Japanese whaling,” Bishop said in a statement. “We are also exploring options for further legal action.

“The science is clear: all information necessary for management and conservation of whales can be obtained through non-lethal methods.”

The fleet plans to kill 333 minke whales a year in the Antarctic for the next 12 years. The fisheries agency said its revised whaling programme took into account the concerns and recommendations of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and the international court of justice in The Hague.

The IWC banned commercial whale slaughter in 1986 but allowed Japan to kill just under 1,000 whales a year for scientific research. The meat from the expeditions is sold legally in Japanese supermarkets and restaurants.

Joji Morishita, Tokyo’s ambassador to the IWC, insisted Japan had the right to resume its pursuit of whales after a year-long suspension.

Morishita said: “We did our best to try to meet the criteria established by the international court of justice and we have decided to implement our research plan, because we are confident that we completed the scientific homework as well as meeting the ICJ judgment requirement.”

Morishita acknowledged that whaling would continue to divide international opinion, but said Japan would not back down. “The solution is that we have to agree to disagree. However, this does not mean we will take all whales – exactly because we’d like to have sustainable whaling. We’d like to have a healthy whale population.”