Activists stage dolphin die-in at Japanese embassy in US

0 Comments | AFP, September, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Environmental and animal rights activists dressed as dolphins Wednesday staged a die-in in Washington to protest what they called the "horrific butchering" of thousands of dolphins by Japanese fishermen every year.

Animal welfare activists accuse Japan of brutally slaughtering some 20,000 dolphins and small whales every year in the "biggest massacre of its kind in the world," said the Animal Welfare Institute and Humane Society International, which organized the protest in Washington.

"Japanese fishermen round up pods of dolphins with speedboats and trap them in a small cove where they kill most of them for their meat, often beating them to death with lead pipes," turning the sea water into a churning, scarlet pool of blood, said Rebecca Regnery,...