60,000 demanding wartime bills withdrawn

Breaking the damp atmosphere of the rainy season in Japan, 60,000 voices shouting, "Stop the wartime bills!" echoed throughout Yoyogi Park in Tokyo in a mass rally on June 16.

Both the main venue and the second venue in the park, where a big mobile screen was set up, were full of people, including a group of 115 young people who came from Hokkaido by airplane, families from Shimane Prefecture who came by car, and groups arriving in chartered buses.

The people massed under a call from land, sea, air, and harbor workers' unions, a religious people's network, and a Christians' peace network.

Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo, Social Democratic Party Leader Doi Takako, and Democratic Party Lower House member Ubukata Yukio took the rostrum to call for the three wartime bills to be withdrawn.

JCP Shii pointed out that while a variety of movements taking place all over Japan are pushing the wartime bills into a corner, the ruling parties are plotting to extend a Diet session term in order to desperately ram through the bills.

Shii called on the audience for movements to block the bills until the anti-Constitution force is given a crushing blow.

Vice chairman of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations said the association rarely objects to any specific law. But when it comes to the contingency bills, he said: "We have resolved to stand against them."

An Okinawan peace activist talked about how the former Japanese Imperial Army deprived Okinawans of their farm lands and mobilized them in encampment and airfield build-ups during the war, and when the war ended, the U.S. forces seized their land using bulldozers and bayonets. The activist referred to the dangerous nature of the wartime legislation and called on all Okinawans to unite in opposition to the bills.

A 17-year-old high school girl said, "I have a dream for the future, but war will ruin all our futures. I want pro-war politicians to remember that the past wars left nothing good for us."

A seaman said, "We seamen are determined not to make the sea a battlefield again. To set the Japanese Constitution as the global standard will be the most effective way of security for a maritime nation such as Japan."

A 21-year-old physical therapist who came to Tokyo from Okinawa by airplane said, "I knew most Okinawans are in opposition to the bills, but I'm so glad here to know that so many people outside Okinawa are also against the bills." (end)