Iceland review - 2016, Page 73

ICELAND REVIEW 71
In October, nine opposition MPs
in Iceland’s parliament submitted a
request to the foreign ministry for a
report on how whaling impacts Iceland.
The MPs asked Minister for Foreign
Affairs Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson, who
himself has suggested that halting whal-
ing could strengthen rapport with the
US, to provide an explanation as to why
no United States Secretary of State has
visited Iceland since 2008 and whether
the whaling issue is to blame.
UPSETTING THE WORLD
The report was to assess, in particu-
lar, how concerned the White House is
about whaling, for it might be the cause
for an embargo on fish products from
Iceland as an ‘offending nation,’ accord-
ing to the Pelly Amendment.
“We expect to get the evidence that
quite a number of countries are protest-
ing,” explains the leader of the initiative,
Sigríður Ingibjörg Ingadóttir, MP for
the Social Democratic Alliance. “If it is
harming our country’s reputation, we
need a special debate on whether it is
economically justifiable to leave it as it is.”
In June 2014, Iceland was snubbed by
US Secretary of State John Kerry when it
was not invited to the State-Department-
sponsored Our Ocean conference. Two
months later, the 28 EU member states,
the US, Australia, Brazil, Israel, Mexico,
Monaco and New Zealand—35 countries
in total—officially demanded that Iceland
stop commercial whaling. In November
2015, hacktivist group Anonymous took
down Icelandic government websites in
protest of the practice. “It’s time to let
Iceland know we will not stand by and
watch as they drive this animal to extinc-
tion,” the group said in a statement.
One of the stiffest whaling advocates
in Iceland, Jón Gunnarsson, MP for
the Independence Party, waves this off:
“This is the same old song,” he says. His
son Gunnar Bergmann Jónsson is the
only person in the country whose fac-
tory is allowed to process minke whales.
Jón doesn’t worry about the prospective
development of the industry—the sale of
Icelandic seafood to the US has been on
the rise, despite whaling. He recalls when
25 nations rebuked Iceland for resum-
ing the practice in 2006, and claims
that it didn’t have any negative financial
consequences: “Where does it affect us?
Tourists are among the main consumers
of whale meat here. There are already
more than a million of them coming this
year. Is that a reason to stop whaling?”
WHALING
A blue whale in Skjálfandi bay.