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Japanese protest against US base

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DejaVu
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« on: November 09, 2009, 02:30:14 pm »

Japanese protest US base before Obama visit

Sunday, 8 November 2009



GINOWAN, Japan (AFP) – Tens of thousands of Okinawan residents rallied Sunday against a US military base on the island, raising the heat in a simmering row days before US President Barack Obama is due in Japan.

Opposition has often flared on the island against the presence of the large US military base, strategically located within easy reach of China, Taiwan and North Korea and dubbed the United States' "unsinkable aircraft carrier".

But the election of a new centre-left government in Tokyo in September, ending decades of conservative rule, has brought the issue to the centre of national politics and strained Japan's most important security alliance.

"I urge Prime Minister (Yukio) Hatoyama to tell President Obama that Okinawa needs no more US bases," said Ginowan mayor Yoichi Iha at the rally.

"I urge Prime Minister Hatoyama to make a brave decision and put an end to Okinawa's burden and ordeal."

Protesters, from elderly people wearing straw hats to young families carrying babies, applauded the mayor's speech in a park near the controversial US Marine Corps Futenma Air Base in Ginowan city.

Organisers said some 21,000 people had gathered for the event, which comes ahead of Obama's visit to Tokyo on Friday and Saturday.

The Futenma base, located in a densely populated urban area, has emerged as a flashpoint for local opponents who have been angered by aircraft noise, pollution, the risk of accidents and crimes committed by US service personnel.

Okinawans reacted with fury to the 1995 **** of a schoolgirl by three US servicemen. Demands to close the base on safety grounds grew when a US helicopter crashed in the grounds of a local university in 2004.

Hatoyama's government, which swept to power in a landslide and has vowed a less subservient relationship with Washington, has said it may want the base moved off the island or even out of the country.

The United States has demanded Japan honour a 2006 agreement under which the Futenma base would be closed but its air operations moved to an alternative site to be built on Okinawa by 2014 in the coastal Camp Schwab area.

But many Okinawans and activists also oppose the planned new base, which would be built on reclaimed land and would include two runways protesters say are likely to affect a marine habitat that is home to corals and an endangered sea mammal, the dugong.

On a visit to Japan last month, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates bluntly urged Tokyo to "move on" and resolve the issue before Obama's arrival, stressing that Washington does not want to renegotiate an agreed pact.

Hatoyama has said Japan will need more time as it weighs the demands of Washington and of the people of Okinawa, a heartland of left-leaning and pacifist groups who oppose the bases.

In Tokyo on Sunday, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said the decision could be delayed into next year, while a string of upcoming local elections on the island could also sway the fate of the base.

Protester Yoshiko Yonamine, 64, said: "Okinawans voted for the new administration, thinking it would remove the base from the island. I don't want it to betray us."

Ikita Kiyuna, 35, who brought his one-year-old son and wife to the rally said he already felt cheated by Hatoyama and his ruling Democratic Party.

"If they don't do anything to make changes, they are just the same as the previous government" of the conservative Liberal Democrats, he said.

Subtropical Okinawa, located about 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) south of Tokyo, saw some of the bloodiest battles of World War II.

American occupation forces only handed the island back to Japan in 1972. Okinawa continues to host more than half of the 47,000 US troops stationed in the country, while Japan's pacifist constitution bars its Self-Defence Forces from offensive military action.

Washington and Tokyo have been close security allies in the post-war era, with the United States guaranteeing Japan's defence and providing nuclear deterrence during and after the Cold War.

Takehiko Yamamoto, a professor of politics at Waseda University, said Hatoyama has to solve the difficult "puzzle" by juggling Japan, Okinawa and the United States in his coalition with a pacifist socialist party.

"It will be a test of Hatoyama's ability to see if he can convince the local community and make the final decision," he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091108/wl_afp/japanusdiplomacymilitarydemonstration_20091108100130



Why must the US continue to occupy countries full of people that don't want us there?


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The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside. --Allan Bloom

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