Amnesty International has called on the Japanese government to preserve the right to legitimate protest in the wake of the conviction of two Greenpeace activists for the theft of a box of whale meat. Junichi Sato, 33, and Toru Suzuki, 43, were convicted on Monday of theft and trespass by a court in the northern city of Aomori and were each sentenced to one-year jail terms, suspended for three years. The pair admitted the theft of the 23kg (50lb) box of whale meat, officially deemed to be for research purposes, but say they took the box to help illustrate the much wider problem of similar thefts by whaling ship crews who then sell the meat on for substantial profits.