Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's website was hacked by an individual claiming to belong to the group Anonymous. The group has not formally claimed responsibility of this attack, though it has accepted responsibility on earlier occasions of having brought down Japanese websites in protest at the country's whaling program.

"Access to Abe's personal website is indeed limited. We do not have information on whether the attack was actually committed by the Anonymous group of hackers," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said in a daily briefing on Dec. 10, reports Sputnik News.

The attack was in retaliation to Japan's whaling operations which continue despite an international ban. Though the IWC banned commercial whale slaughter in 1986, it allowed Japan to kill just less than 1,000 whales a year for scientific studies.

After the takedown, the activist announced on Twitter that "Whaling is NOT Cultural Right! Your website is #TangoDown! #RektIt"

The United Nations had ruled last year that the expeditions offer little scientific value and were in fact a front for commercial whaling. As the Japanese fleet set sail on Dec.1, this year Australia and New Zealand protested the slaughter.

"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," wrote New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, according to The Guardian.

"We are working with other like-minded nations to build international consensus against Japanese whaling. 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," said Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, according to The Guardian.

"We do not accept in any way, shape or form the concept of killing whales for so-called 'scientific research.' There is no need to kill whales in the name of research. Non-lethal research techniques are the most effective and efficient method of studying all cetaceans," said Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt, reports Hacked.com.

However, Joji Morishita, Tokyo's ambassador to the IWC, insisted that Japan had a right to hunt whales. 

"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," said Morishita, according to The Guardian. "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."

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