[lbo-talk] More on the Freed Japanese Hostages

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Apr 23 22:18:53 PDT 2004



>Bill Bartlet writes:
>
>"Are there any redeeming features whatsoever of Japanese culture?
>Nothing comes to mind."
>
>I feel as heartsick as you about the welcome given to the Japanese
>hostages. I am also actually surprised that no one has said anything
>to commend the Iraqis for releasing them. But to answer your
>question off the top of my head and from relative ignorance about
>Japanese culture: Hokusai, Zen, and an extraordinary aesthetic sense
>do come to mind.
>
>Brad Mayer may be able to contribute more as he has been studying
>Japanese, Japanese history, and Japanese culture for the last few
>years.
>
>Yoshie?
>
>Joanna

The attacks on the freed hostages are hardly national -- they are plainly partisan attacks by the LDP, its supporters, and right-wing media such as _Yomiuri_ and _Mainichi_ that serve them. They are attacked because all of them were and remain critical of Japan's participation in the US occupation of Iraq and none has denounced the Iraqi uprising, not even their captors. For the same reason, the opposition parties (namely the JCP and the SDP), their supporters, and peace activists in general have been supportive of them.

***** JAPAN: Ex-hostage stands by decision to visit Iraq Journalist regrets lax security awareness en route to main war zone

The Japan Times Thursday, April 22, 2004 By Hiroshi Matsubara

A freelance journalist recently freed after being held hostage in Iraq said that while he regrets not properly realizing the dangers of traveling near a war zone, he stands by his decision to go and report on the situation there.

Junpei Yasuda, 30, who returned to Japan on Tuesday, told The Japan Times in an interview later in the day that, as a journalist, he feels it is his mission to return to Iraq. . . .

Yasuda and Nobutaka Watanabe, a 36-year-old peace activist, were taken captive by gunmen in Abu-Greib, west of Baghdad, on April 14 while approaching the city of Fallujah in a cab. They were released unharmed Saturday.

Their capture came a week after three other Japanese civilians were taken hostage near Fallujah. The trio were released April 15.

Yasuda, who has visited Iraq four times since 2002 and last entered the country in mid-March, said he believes his captors are a small group of local tribal militiamen.

He said there were at least two farmers in the group who said they had been maltreated when they were detained by the U.S. military for more than a month and bore a strong dislike for the pair.

"Iraq now seems to be in a process where the anger of such people who have experienced war or harsh treatment by the occupation forces is rapidly spreading," Yasuda reckoned.

He added that he believes most of his abductors were not organized military units but just civilians who decided to arm themselves to protect their communities in response to the huge influx of refugees from combat zones in Iraq and out of paranoia over the possible infiltration of "spies." . . .

He stressed that his mission as a journalist is to report the sentiments of Iraqis toward the ongoing war and toward Japan's dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces troops to Iraq on a humanitarian aid mission.

"While I was interviewing locals about the (first) three Japanese hostages, they asked why I was not concerned about the hundreds of Iraqi civilians who had already been killed," he said.

"It is such voices as these that all Japanese, who condoned the dispatch of our military as an ally of the United States, must hear."

Date Posted: 4/22/2004

<http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=10529> *****

If any American activist or journalist got taken hostage, released, and said anything like above, it would probably attract the same or worse criticism from the US government and right-wing media. -- Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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