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SPRING
NEWS
Anti G8 Protests Kick Off in Sapporo
 On Saturday 5 July the first large
sized protests against the G8 summit in Hokkaido - set for July 7-9 at
Lake Toyako - hit the streets with a multitude of leftist groups and
NGO's making their presence felt in the Odori Koen area in the centre
of the city. Four arrests were made as the police
provoked demonstrators and arbitrarily opted to haul the driver of a
sound truck from his cab - smashing the glass in the process and
arresting him for "traffic violations" and "on suspicion of obstructing
police officers in the performance of their duty" - a common charge
here in Japan and a tactic used by police to disrupt peaceful protests.
Also arrested was a Japanese Reuters cameraman.
Anti-G8
Demonstrators Sapporo July 5.
The protestors as usual were colourfully dressed, in high spirits and
peaceful, displaying their disdain for the G8 through costume, music
and dance as well as placards and banners with messages such as "G8 =
war", "G8 = Empire", "G8 = poverty". In the meantime articulate
spokespeople gave media interviews on topics ranging from the
repression of indigenous peoples ( with special focus on the Ainu of
Hokkaido - islands invaded and colonised by the Japanese whereby the
Ainu people were forcibly assimilated to Japanese culture) to the
problems of global warming, and of course to the age old issue of
wealth disparity. Further to these issues La Via Campesina issued a
statement protesting against the refused entry of nineteen South Korean
activists at Chitose Airport near Sapporo. La Via Campesina is a
worldwide group that protests and campaigns on behalf of the world's
farmers, fighting the big biotech companies and unjust agricultural
policies imposed on them by the WTO, World bank and IMF. The Japanese
authorities have routinely been denying entry, harrassing, detaining
and delaying activists on their way to alternative G8 forums.
One of Japan's finest greets the police
in Sapporo.
More protests are
expected today ( July 6 ) and on consecutive days throughout the summit
and activists have established two campsites for a "Lake Toya Camp"
with workshops and cultural events.
More news soon....
For the Anti-G8 Events Calendar click
here
these
events have been arranged by a coalition of groups from a variety of
political perspectives. Big respect to those who have put this
together, especially No G8! For those of you going to Hokkaido, stay
safe, in solidarity!
Tokyo Police Deny Freedom of
Expression: Police Arrest Several at Yoyogi Park Anti-G8 Rally 6/29
 On
June 27 the
National Committee for Organizing a
Rally on June 29 Against the G8 Summit, called by Doro Chiba, the Chiba
Railway Workers Union demanded that there be no restrictions placed on
the right of
the people to use public roads for free speech activities. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police
Department
had undertaken an initiative to exclude a march from the downtown area
of
Shibuya which was scheduled to take place on Sunday 29 June. The
marchers had initially been granted permission by The
Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Commission, however, at the last
minute the course of the march which
had been filed under the Tokyo
Public Safety Ordinance, was unilaterally changed without any
legitimate reason. Furthermore, permission was only granted after 2pm
on July 27 making it practically impossible for the organisers to file
a lawsuit to get
a provisional injunction which would have allowed the march to go ahead
legally on the orginal course.
 The organising
committee
strongly opposed this outrageous
violation of freedom of expression guaranteed under Article 21 of the
Constitution and called for the march to go ahead as planned. Followng
the call, over a thousand people rallied at Yoyogi Park including many
overseas visitors. The area was heavily policed by cops in full riot
gear and snatch squads randomly pulled people from the crowds and
numerous
arrests were made. There will more news here as it comes
in.....
Top Photo: Riot police block the path
of demonstrators at Yoyogi Park, Tokyo. Bottom Photo: Demonstrators
eventually march in Shibuya.
22 Hosei Students Released,15
Indicted for "Trespass", 1 Convicted & Jailed
Earlier in the month we reported on the
plight of Hosei University students arrested for trespassing on their
own campus at Iidabashi in Tokyo after handing out leaflets calling for
freedom of movement and expression as well as anti-G8 material.
On
June 18, three of the five students who had been arrested on May 28
were released and two indicted. Another student was arrested on June 18
for alleged "trespassing on May 29."
On June 19, the
prosecution released 19 of 38 students who had been
arrested on May 29. However 13 students were indicted for
"trespassing." One was sent to a family court and then to a juvenile
corrective institution.
On June 24, one of the 13
students indicted on June 19 （who had
not been released) was "rearrested" for "obstructing officers from
performing their duty."
All of the
above-mentioned detainees,
including very young and inexperienced students, have been
resolutely
exercising their rights to remain silent during interrogation by
police; they have uttered no word whatsoever
and should be commended for their conduct in the face of harsh tactics
and bullying form their interrogators.
Please visit the
web site of Houdai Kyuenkai (Support Committee for the
Arrested and the Accused for the Hosei University Dispute) for more
information by clicking here. Further
to thiss you can check out the original story below.
The Last Days of May: 38 Activists
Harrassed and Arrested at Hosei
University
During the last days of May things heated
up in a G8 related series of events at Hosei University, where
ultimately, 38 students were arrested for leafletting on campus at
Hosei University in Tokyo. Protesting the G8 and in addition for their
right to freedom of movement and political expression at the
university, the students and activists hadn't banked on University
officialdom hiring thugs to physically assault and eject them from the
University - or that the said authorities would call in the police to
act with impunity at a peaceful action. Read more
Earlier in June a
Springer went out to help English teachers employed by Simul Academy in
an ongoing dispute - if you are thinking of looking for
work in
education in Japan, then there are quite a few things to consider, not
least of which are your rights as an employee and your status as an
immigrant worker. The following is a brief account and commentary by
our man Mercaders who was on the spot at Simul. Check
out the story here.
Meanwhile at Shy Mule Academy.......
Check
out what's been going on in Alice in Wonderland. Apparently fantasy
figures have labour troubles too....Click here to read
more.
Check out the Film & Discussion page for
news of our feature in July by clicking on the link to the left...
Take a look at the Hashimoto Spring
page for news of Sulejman's new
blog
Look at the articles page one or two things have been added......
Sign up for the forum as it is being used by more people
now and you can exchange news and views there it
is slowly but surely becoming a good spot for updated international
news and commentary as well as points of view from Spring participants. Please take the time
and effort to re-register and we will validate your account a.s.a.p.
Remember that you can create forums of your own within the board by
learning about the settings and features. When you register, if you
want to post in Japanese, select Japanese as your preferred language.
You will be able to type and post in Kanji, hiragana and katakana.
However, when you view the message on the board it will appear
scrambled, as we don't yet have an installation that fully supports
Japanese. To unscramble the post, click on view in your browser tool
bar and select character encoding. Click on one of the three Japanese
encodings and you should be able to read the message clearly.
"We
speak of
national interests, national
capital, national spheres of
interest, national honour, and national spirit; but we forget that
behind all this there are hidden merely the selfish interests of
power-loving politicians and money-loving business men for whom the
nation is a convenient cover to hide their personal greed and their
schemes for political power from the eyes of the world."
(Rocker,
Culture and Nationalism, Michael E. Coughlan, 1978, p.253)
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