toshimaru ogura on Sun, 30 Sep 2001 08:07:35 +0200 (CEST) |
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[Nettime-bold] Three statements against war (from Japan) |
Dear all, Hellow, this is my first post to nettime. A lot of Japanese organizations and individuals has already taken action against war. I forward three statements in Englsih in Japan. [1]and[2] need your sign on, please send your e-mal to the organizers. toshi Networkers against Surveillance Taskforce (NaST) ((((((((((^0^)))))))))) toshimaru ogura ogr@nsknet.or.jp http://www.jca.apc.org/~toshi/ Repeal Wiretap Law!! ((((((((((^0^)))))))))) ==================================================================== [1]Joint statement: We oppose the U.S. war of retaliation and Request the Japanese government to retract its support for this war. [2]We categorically reject the retaliation war of the United States against the terrorist attack and We demand a peaceful solution ** A call for global solidarity against global war **Proposed by Violence Against Women in War Network, Japan. [3]Stop U.S. Military Retaliation; Don't Carry Out Ethnic and Religious Discrimination. A Statement from the Pacific Asia Resource Center =================================================================== [1]Joint statement: We oppose the U.S. war of retaliation and Request the Japanese government to retract its support for this war. Friends, We are sending, attached and pasted, our joint statement, titled, "We oppose the U.S. war of retaliation and Request the Japanese government to retract its support for this war,"an anti-terrorism, anti-war joint statement on the NY-Pentagon incident and the US response to it. This statement was originally prepared by 31 citizens in Japan on Sept. 18. By Sept. 23, more than 1500 citizens from all walks of life, mainly from Japan, signed it. This indicates serious concern shared by citizens in this country. We appreciate that you will share this position statement with your friends. We are horrified at the prospect of more innocent people having nothing to do with terrorism falling victim to violence, in addition to those in the United States victimised by the terrorist attacks. In Japan too, anti-war action is being launched in Tokyo as well as many other places in the country. We are heartened to hear similar voices are being raised in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, and we wish to join them. Let us keep in touch. Joint statement signatories Contact point: ppsg@jca.apc.org ============================================================================= We oppose the U.S. war of retaliation and Request the Japanese government to retract its support for this war September 22, 2001 We were shocked at the sight of the massive destruction and deaths that resulted from the suicidal attacks at the economic and military centers of the United States carried out on September 11 using passenger airplanes as weapons. Thousands of innocent people were killed, and many more people suffered physical and psychological injuries. We who seek a world free from violence condemn this act, whatever its motivation, as a crime we cannot tolerate. We express our profound condolences for the victims to the bereaved families, their relatives, and friends, and wish for quick recovery of those who were injured. We are alike shocked by what the U.S. government has decided to do in response to this incident. President Bush, declaring that the attacks were “acts of war,” decided to launch “the first war in the 21st Century” mobilizing the whole international community to retaliate against the terrorists. Islamic extremists headed by Osama bin Laden are the immediate putative enemy. The United States is engaging in a full-scale war to annihilate“terrorist systems”said to be spread all over the world. The world’s superpower has thus declared war against an entity which is not a state. Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz explained that the military campaign has as its objective termination of the terrorist networks and the states harboring terrorists. President said that the war will be large-scaled and prolonged . White House Press Secretary Fleischer briefed that in this war no option is excluded. The U.S. Congress passed a resolution giving President all powers of exercise of military forces and allocated $40 billion for this war. The NATO has decided to participate in this war invoking its collective security clause. Meeting an act of terrorism with a full-scale war is an unusual response. The September 11 mass killing of civilians obviously constitutes a major international crime, a crime against humanity. In addition to procedures under the U.S. domestic law, the perpetrators and accomplices of this crime should be brought to justice under the international laws and tried and punished by an international criminal court set up by the United Nations. Without such procedures proposed, the United States declared a state of war. Military attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan are impending, and given the declared purpose of destroying the international terrorist systems, the theater of war is not limited to that country. For the following reasons we strongly oppose this call for war and ask the Bush administration to immediately retract it. Firstly, this war not only would fail to bring about solution to the problem but also is highly likely to bring the whole world into an infinite chain reaction of violence and hatred. It is impossible to eradicate amorphous networks of terrorists by regular military means. As long as the social soil generating terrorism persists, the eradication of one organization would not foreclose the emergence of another. More importantly, the September 11 incident strikingly demonstrated the high vulnerability of ”advanced societies,”that makes their perfect defense a matter of impossibility. Predictably, the U.S. retaliation is likely to invite an escalating terrorist counter-retaliation, which will be met by yet larger-scale counterattacks, thus leading the world into a situation without exits victimizing an ever larger number of innocent civilians. The only way to prevent such would be to introduce a complete global system of surveillance that will deprive individuals everywhere of their freedom and privacy and destroy democracy. Already, steps are being taken in this ominous direction. Secondly, we hear in the loud official and private voices calling for vengeance a horrifying note of arrogance and hatred, indicating the revival of colonial-time notion of civilization versus barbarity. This war is described as a war to protect civilization (Secretary of State Powel) and the struggle of “the good against the evil" (President Bush). Reports are arriving about Arabs and South Asians in the United States being treated with hatred and violence. The mainstream opinion in Europe seems to uncritically accept this civilization-versus-the-other approach. The perception that this arrogance equating Euro-America to civilization has historically humiliated and excluded the Islamic world and eventually generated antagonists to the “West” is dangerously absent in the dominant retaliation discourse. “Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process ? or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world ? seems almost entirely absent.” (Seumas Miln, The Guardian Sept. 13) The lack of this recognition fuels terrorism as a desperate form of action. The world remembers that the United States, by waging wars from Vietnam War to the Gulf, by supporting dictatorial regimes in Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere, and, among others, by backing Israel's unlawful occupation of Palestinian territories, have directly and indirectly caused the deaths of far larger numbers of innocent non-combatants than the victims of the September 11 incident. Now the dominance of the world by the United States has come to an unprecedented level. The United States behaves as the global power center imposing neo-liberal globalization on the overwhelming majority of the world population, without addressing the resultant yawning gap between the rich and the poor and the disruption of the global environment. The Bush administration, adopting unilateralism as its policy, has been disrupting one positive international arrangement after another, ranging from global warming through ABM, nuclear testing, and international criminal court, to racial discrimination, all in the name of the U.S. national interests. This has provoked yet more intense public criticism and anger throughout the world. Such a global environment that the United States itself has created is the historical backdrop against which the September 11 incident occurred. In this sense, we consider that the September 11 incident victims were also sacrificed by the U.S. global domination. Prime Minister Koizumi surprised us by promptly expressing his unconditional support for the United States’ ”war of retaliation.” The Japanese government is now searching for ways to enable the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to participate in the war, either by making new laws or misusing existing laws. They are also taking advantage of this incident to introduce crisis management packages and to militarize society. The government and ruling parties have decided to revise the Self-Defense Law in order to protect U.S. military bases in Japan and facilitate SDF’s deployment for internal peace. These rightwing forces are now using the U.S. war for a trial run of a war-capable state introduced under the 1997 Japan-U.S. joint defense guidelines. We are convinced that Japan ought to do exactly the opposite. If Japan is a country that“renounces war forever as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes,” (Article 9 of the Constitution), what Japan ought to do with confidence and dignity try to persuade the United States into opting for other solutions based on ”the trust in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world.” (Preamble) The situation strongly suggests that only this approach will open up perspective for the prevention of another tragedy of the same kind. We demand that the Japanese government, following the Japanese constitutional pacifism, retract its support for the Bush government’s war of retaliation and request the U.S. government to drop its war plans. We demand that the Japanese government drop its attempt to use this opportunity to become a full-fledged “war-capable state.” In concrete, we demand that the Japanese government abandon its state-of-emergency legislation, SDF law revision for the protection of U.S. bases, new legislation and/or enlarged interpretation of the guidelines related laws for SDF’s war participation. We demand that the Japanese government drastically review its policy of promoting neo-liberal globalization processes that intensify social tensions and conflicts everywhere to an unbearable level. On this basis, the Japanese government should propose to the WTO and other related agencies a fundamental change of direction in global politico-economic management toward mitigating social tensions and ending elimination of the people at the bottom and further destruction of environment. If people’s security matters, marking a step forward in this direction is the only way to enhance the security of the people in the United States as well as the rest of the world. This is time we should cut the vicious cycle of violence and hatred. Whether the September 11 tragedy can be the starting point in this direction or be the trigger to set the vicious cycle of violence into motion depends on our ability and will to create viable people’s linkages to prevent the war and its expansion. We are encouraged by voices coming from grieved New York people, “Peace, Not revenge!” In these voices we sense that many in New York who experienced the clashing calamity, now feeling war, bombing, and massive violence close to them, find that vengeance using overwhelming military power and the show of American force do not make amends for their grief. Voices against this war of vengeance are rising from peace movements and informed public of the United States. They are rising everywhere in the world. We join our voices with them. Let us act together to stop the war and create a world that does not foster terrorism! Original signatories include: Akiyama, Naoe (Japan Negros Campaign Committee) Ishizaki, Atuko (Grass Seeds Association) Ukai, Satoshi (Hitotsubashi University) Oshima, Koichi (Christian Political League) Otsu, Kenichi (National Christian Council of Japan) Ogawa, Yoshinobu (Christian Peace Network) Kimura, Kenzo (Catholic Council for Peace and Justice) Ogura, Toshimaru (Project against Network Monitoring) Kurihara, Yukio (literary critic) Sugimoto, Rie (Institute of Local Science) Ogasawara, Kimiko (NCC-J, Peace and Nuclear Issues Committee) Ohashi, Yukako (Soshiren: From my Body) Tawara, Yoshibumi (National Network on Children and Textbooks) Tono, Haruhi (Asia-Pacific Workers' Solidarity Links) Tomiyama, Yoko (Japan Consumers' Union) Nakayama, Chinatsu (writer) Hanasaki, Kohei (Sapporo Freedom School) Fukutomi, Setsuo (Concerned Citizens of Japan) Matsui, Yayori (VAWW-NET-Japan) Muto, Ichiyo (People's Plan Study Group) Yoshikawa, Yuichi (Concerned Citizens of Japan) Watanabe, Ben (Center for Transnational Labor Studies) Mizuhara, Hiroko (Japan Consumers' Union) Yamaguchi, Yasuko (Women's Democratic Club) Yamaguchi, Yukio (Citizens' Nuclear Information Center) Mizushima, Asaho (Waseda University) Ota, Masakuni (writer) Amano, Yasukazu (National Fax Network Against War) Oda, Makoto (writer) Tomiyama, Ichiro (professor) Tachiyama, Kouki (Yamaguchi University) =================================================================== [2]We categorically reject the retaliation war of the United States against the terrorist attack and We demand a peaceful solution ** A call for global solidarity against global war **Proposed by Violence Against Women in War Network, Japan. ========================================================== http://www1.jca.apc.org/fem/lookout/NoViolence/index2.html ======================================================= Urgent Appeal Japanese version Jump to Petition From We categorically reject the retaliation war of the United States against the terrorist attack and We demand a peaceful solution ** A call for global solidarity against global war ** Proposed by Violence Against Women in War Network, Japan September 17, 2001 We demand: 1.The United States government should call off the preparation for the retaliation war against the international terrorist attack. 2.The Japanese government should not cooperate with the United States military policy. 3.The United Nations should establish International Criminal Tribunal to prosecute and punish the perpetrators of the terrorist attack. 4.The racist attacks against Arab people should be stopped. 5.A just and co-existence world should be created in order to eliminate the root causes of terrorism. We, VAWW-NET Japan and our friends have addressed the issue of Japan's war crime committed in the 20th century. Our objective is to create a violence-free 21st century. We are deeply shocked at the terrorist attack that occurred in the first year of the new century, and we are frightened by the United States government call for the retaliation war. We express our profound condolence for thousands of loss of lives and share grief of those who have lost their loved ones. This attack may be an unprecedented tragedy in American history in which so many Americans perished in a single day. What the tragedy implies, however, is that security policy of the world's largest military might did not protect their citizens. The center of its economy and the military power were so vulnerably destroyed. Yet, even before the perpetrators are identified, President Bush called it "acts of war", and announced the military attack in revenge and vowed the United States will win this war of "good versus evil", and "civilization versus barbarism". We express our uncompromising rejection to the retribution by force. This terrorist attack is an international crime, not a war. This carnage is a crime against humanity. The crime needs to be brought to justice at the International Criminal Tribunal which the United Nations should establish: the perpetrators and the accomplices need to be prosecuted and punished through due process according to international law. However, President Bush declared that the United States and its allies would destroy not only terrorist groups but also the states which aid and harbor the terrorist groups, ignoring the role of the UN. A budget of 40 billion dollars is now allocated for the military strategy. Isn't this act of President Bush a violation of international law? It is a renunciation of democracy and the rule of law -- the very pride of the United States. We oppose to this belief of the United States leaders -- violence against violence. Violence does not eradicate terrorism. Violence only produces more violence. The history has proven it. Peaceful means is the only way to end the cycle of violence. The United States media fans the emotion of the public towards the direction of the Third World War as the public opinion overwhelmingly supports the use of force. We wonder whether the United States citizens who support the retaliation ever thought of the reasons why they were targeted. The victims of this tragedy are the victims of the mistaken foreign policies of their own government. The victims include a number of people from other nations. We recall the millions of death of not only other Asian people, but also of Japanese citizens caused in the Japanese war of aggression in the last century. People of the world remember that the United States has killed thousands of thousands more people in the world -- in Vietnam War, in the Gulf War, by aiding the dictatorships in South America and in Asia, by bombing Sudan and former Yugoslavia, and in supporting Israeli government who continues occupation of the land of Palestine. In the present time, it is the United States which propels globalization that has caused enormous economic disparities between wealthy and poor nations, environmental destruction, and armed conflicts. The Unites States government rejects international cooperation on such issues as global warming, nuclear non-proliferation, establishing International Criminal Court, and the UN World Conference against Racism. Peoples in the world feel outrage and even hatred against the United States. We also recall the United States itself has provided terrorist groups with weapons. These are the causes of this terrorist attack. Without addressing these root causes, terrorist attacks would never be eliminated. It would remain "the weapon of the weak". A woman from an Asian nation has written to us: "I wonder if Americans know how devastating a war is." She suffered the war waged in her own land. If one feels raged at the loss of thousands of Americans, would not she/he think of the possible loss of lives of women and children in such nations as Afghanistan? Those people would be killed in the war that the United States is about to initiate. Should not these deaths be prevented? The military attack against Afghanistan will certainly cause more deaths among 4 million people who have already suffered from hunger caused by the United States economic sanction. We are also concerned about violence against women in the case when the ground troops are deployed. As Americans were plunged into sorrow, these people would experience the same. Is it true that the victims of the terrorist attack would want such cruel revenge? Is it true that their soul may rest in peace by another tragedy? We do not believe that hatred nationalism is what they want. The lives in the non-Western world need to be protected as much as the lives in the Western world need to be protected. This belief lies in the heart of democracy and in the principle of human rights -- the "civilization" that the United States values. We have heard that people of Arabic origins in the Unites States are now facing vicious racist violence. We demand such violence be stopped immediately. At the same time, we are encouraged by receiving "other voices", many statements against war from United States citizens of conscience. We want to act in solidarity with those who courageously pursue peace in the midst of patriotic warlike chauvinism. NATO nations' support of the United States military attack is, we perceive, an expression of repressive means against peoples in the South such as Muslims. The NATO support of the United States government is a refusal of the reflection on their past of imposing colonialism. It denies the efforts to reform unjust North-South inequality that exists today. We hope civil society in the West take action for peace, not the use of force. As Japanese citizens, we are deeply concerned about the Japanese government's support of the United States government. The Koizumi administration already decided to modify the Self Defense Forces Law in order to protect the United States military bases located in Japan. It already talks about establishing the emergency preparation system and deployment of Self Defense Forces to keep public order. Right wing nationalists abuse this tragedy to implement the Guidelines for US-Japan Defense Cooperation system to cooperate the United States military action. This is a major step to turning Japan into a nation capable of waging war. We are apprehensive that violence against women may worsen in Okinawa where the United States military bases are heavily located and the function of which will be intensified. We, again, express our strongest rejection to proceeding the road to militarization and to cooperating war. We shall not cooperate any military action to kill. We steadfastly stand for the principle of our peace constitution. We must prevent a global war by any means. It will be a global war of the "North" - the United States, Europe and Japan - against the "South." These nations of the "North" have promoted globalization that have caused arising of fundamentalism and nationalism world wide. People in the "South" especially suffer from these effects of globalization, and they resist globalization. We appeal to citizens of the world including United States citizens of conscience to unite and oppose the globalization of war by our "globalization" of solidarity. Our deep belief firmly stands in the philosophy of non-violence that denies all forms of violence. We ask women all over the world to work together to create a 21st century of peace, not to repeat the century of war. Yayori Matsui Chairperson of VAWW-NET Japan ======================================= [3]Stop U.S. Military Retaliation; Don't Carry Out Ethnic and Religious Discrimination. A Statement from the Pacific Asia Resource Center Please forward freely. ================================================================ September 17, 2001 Stop U.S. Military Retaliation; Don't Carry Out Ethnic and Religious Discrimination A Statement from the Pacific Asia Resource Center ================================================================ We, the Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC), express our sorrow at the tragedy caused by the "simultaneous terrorist attack" on September 11, in which countless thousand of precious lives were lost and many more were injured. We extend our sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on September 11. We cannot accept such a horrific violent attacks. Our movement, PARC, was established in the late 1960s, stemming from the Anti-Vietnam war citizen movement. We have been working to build equal relations among the people of Japan, Asia and the Pacific Ocean, and Third World countries. Based on this position, we express our opposition both to the "simultaneous terrorist attack" and to political responses against this attack both by the US and Japan. First, regardless of what group prepared and implemented this violent attack - although the US government seems to have identified the criminal - we strongly oppose that this attack be called an Act of War, and we oppose the US claim that it has a state right to retaliate using military power. We also strongly oppose US plans for a violent military retaliation. We believe that it is important that a thorough investigation be conducted by international justice authorities and civil police of several countries, and that any response should wait until the release of the results of this investigation. Blind military retaliation by a single nation or by mobilizing allied countries might lead to the sacrifice of as many innocent citizens as this attack or more. And such military retaliation will produce a vicious military escalation. Secondly, whoever conducted this attack, we should not identify them with the ethnic groups and religion they belong. Ethnic and religious prejudice and discrimination should be prevented. It has been reported that hate crimes (crime based on prejudice or hatred) have occurred and that the one-sided information spread by the mass media has inflamed prejudice in the United States. We want to sound an alarm bell against prejudice against Islam and the Third World, which is spreading in parts of Western and Japanese society. Thirdly, no matter how cruel and miserable a situation was caused by this "simultaneous terrorist attack," we should not defend the cruelty and miserable violence, war, and terrorism committed by the US (both government and army). Without even going back to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is clear that millions of innocent people were killed in Vietnam, Iraq, Sudan, Nicaragua, Panama, the Balkan Peninsula and other places by war and state terrorism carried out by the US which has appointed themselves as the policeman of the world and believes that all justice and good are in its hands. Furthermore, the governments of many countries which have received U.S. military and material support have murdered many of their people using their own armies. Indonesia under the Suharto Regime, with the support of the West and Japan, carried out the military occupation at East Timor, and a number of people equal to the victims of the atom bombing of Hiroshima have fallen victim there. State terrorism in the Third World supported by Europe, the U.S. and Japan have received no or little coverage compared to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center Building in New York. While we express profound condolences to the victim of this "simultaneous terrorist attack," we think that unless we expand our condolences equally to people who were victimized by the countless wars and state terrorism led by the US in the past, we cannot guarantee the security of innocent peoples from any violence. Fourthly, we are deeply concerned about the effect of the globalization of the market economy, pushed mainly by the US after the Cold War. This process is dividing the world more than ever into the powerful and the powerless, and this drives marginalized people to despair. There is a mechanism through which marginalized people can find hope in terrorism from a situation of despair. The arms these people hold are weapons exported by the strong, and through these exports, the arm traders have become even stronger. And armed terrorism victimizes many innocent citizens. What we need to do now is to cut this vicious circle of economic globalization and terrorist attacks. In order to make the 21st century one of hope, it is crucial to build alternative logic among people based on solidarity and friendship as global citizens against the logic of the nation states, international institutions and giant global corporations. Finally, we must refer to Japan's moves toward militarism using this "simultaneous terrorist attack" as a pretext. Japanese politicians, most of whom belong to the LDP, plan to enact a new law for emergency situations and establish a notion of the right of collective self defense, which has so far not been acknowledged in Japanese society. We strongly oppose such moves towards the strengthening of military force and the approval for Japan's Self-Defense Forces to participate in the joint military action. We understand that stopping terrorism and providing people with security is needed in order to abolish structural violence around the world and to realize solidarity and confidence among global citizens. We cannot abandon pacifism and the confidence that all nations love peace, which is mentioned in the preface of Japan's Constitution, as a means to attain this purpose. September 17, 2001 Pacific-Asia Resource Center (PARC) 2F Toyo Bldg. 1-7-11 Kanda Awaji-cho Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 101-0063 Japan Tel: 81-3-5209-3455 Fax: 81-3-5209-3453 E-Mail: parc@jca.apc.org http://www.jca.apc.org/parc/index-e.html ------------------------------------------- What is PARC? Founded in 1973, PARC is a secular, non-profit, multifunctional organization working together with the various people's movements in Japan to facilitate development of solidarity links with people in struggle in Asian, Pacific and other countries. With more than 500 due-paying members among movement activists, researchers and professinals all over the country, PARC is the publisher of English and Japanese periodicals, a research and documentation center, and an educational institution, as well as an organizer of international solidarity activities. Our activities are guided by our belief in the power of people to liberate themselves and to create a better, more humane world. We believe that Japan should change so that Japanese dominating them and without destroying the Earth's environmnet. We contend that the people in the North and the South should work for a common future vision of a liberated world. PARC has numerous partners overseas, both secular and religious. We are affiliated with El Taller and Bangkok-based ACFOD. In 1989, together with numerous other popular organizations in Japan and abroad, we initiated the People's Plan for the 21st Century, in the form of a series of related international workshops, which launched an alternative world through transborder participatory democracy. PP21's Minamata Declaration serves as PARC's guideline. -------------------------------------- end of message _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold