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03/07/2008
Arrests and Detentions of Activists and Independent Journalists in Japan
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Why do regimes fear the independent media so?
Remember Singapore's embarrassing IMF summit in 2006 and how the regime in Singapore handled it? Japan, which is 37th in the RSF's press freedom ranking, is now showing that it also fears alternative news. In an event like a G8 summit, independent reporters form one line of defence deterring police brutality in handling protesters. These reporters follow closely the protests and give a different coverage of the protests and the summit issues from the mainstream media, which often portray the protesters as rioters and the NGOs and their alternative summits as naive simple hippie organisations out of touch with the real world. So the intimidation of independent journalists only mean one thing. Regimes only want their views disseminated via the mainstream "credible" media.
Arrests and Detentions of Activists and Independent Journalists in Japan
In the lead up to the G8 Summit in Japan from July 7th through 9th, Japanese authorities have arrested domestic activists and have detained numerous foreign independent media journalists and anti-G8 protesters. At least six independent journalists and ten academics have been detained by Japanese immigration officials in the past weeks, including Andrej Grubacic, professor of sociology at the University of San Francisco.
Police arrested eight protesters on June 29, as 1,500 people marched against the G8 Summit in Tokyo's fashionable fashionable Shibuya and Shinjuku districts. Earlier this month, workers in Kamagasaki clashed with police and security in the face of violent repression and brutality against at least one worker.
Japan's security budget for the G8 Summit is at least 30 billion yen ($283 million), topping the 113 million euros ($186 million) Germany spent to host the summit of the world's most powerful "democratic" nations.
The G8 Summit will be held in the resort town of Toyako on the northern island of Hokkaido. Japanese activists opposing the summit call it an "arbitrary meeting of governments dominating the global financial market with the World Trade Organization and Free Trade Agreeements". They object to the fact that developing nations are forced to accept agreements like NAFTA in exchange for ODA (Official Developmental Assistance).
At the local level, they are concerned that in recent years Japanese social welfare has been reduced and the working poor have suffered. Agribusiness, a favorite topic of G8 discussion, runs counter to Japanese tradition of respect for individual farmers. At the same time, the US is urging Japan to re-arm despite having a constitution imposed by US Occupation Forces that calls for Japan to forever remain a peaceful nation.
The US led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are also targets of the G8 protests, and caricatures of President Bush with the theme "Wanted for Murder" were seen in internet video of the demonstrations.
On June 30th, the Counter-G8 International Forum opened in Hokkaido and will conclude on July 1st. Media G8way reports that anti-G8 activists from Japan and across the world came together to strategize on how to resist the G8 and construct alternatives to a system in which "financial crises, food crises and ecological destruction are inherent."
Meanwhile, organizers continue to prepare protests and demonstrations against the summit. Daily six hour marches are planned from one of the main camps, Toyoura camp, into town, and a major demonstration estimated at 10,000 people is scheduled for July 5 in Sapporo.
02:00 Posted by Eng Chuan Lee | Permalink | Comments (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
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>Singapore's embarrassing IMF summit in 2006
since the japanese government decided to imitage singapore, they obviously did not find the experience embarrassing
to me, the embarrassing part was that the summit was taken too seriously; for example, the organizations spent a great deal of money creating a few hundred (or was it two thousand? - dont quite remember) temporary offices for all the organizations, with communication facilities, computers, etc, but these were hardly used; the visitors were busy doing other things, perhaps standing around the venue reserved for demonstrations waiting for something exciting to happen, but none did; the summit was more a social event than anything else
as far demonstrations at such meetings are concerned, the WTO meeting in Hongkong a little earlier was much more eventful; however, if a similar event takes place today in HK, I rather think things would be quieter, judging by the low turnout of Tibet and Falungong activities when the Olympic torch passed there (the torch did not pass Singapore, but it was in KL); the Korean farmers, who were present in force in HK, did not come to the singapore event; right now they are demonstrating in Seoul about US beef...
as for why independent media are feared (which is only marginally related to the arrests taking place in Japan, because I think these were more aimed at preventing demonstrations and physical violence than media reporting): asian culture still demands that leaders be given reverence, not made fun of like George Bush gets every day; with newspapers and broadcasting, you can restrict licensing to a small no. of organizations that you are comfortable with; websites and blogs used to be seen as harmless personal expressions (LKY himself suggested at a public forum, when someone criticized SPH, that the speaker should just go and start his own blog instead of complaining), they are taken more seriously today, but how to manage them is still unclear
Posted by: yuen | 03/07/2008