2015: Families of Ferry Victims
16. April 2014 - 16. April 2015
Der Untergang der Ferry SEWOL bei Jindo, Südkorea
Source: The Guardian, Associated Press in Seoul, Thursday 2 April 2015
Siehe auch hier
Hier ein Video in Erinnerung an den 16. April 2014 (7.4.2015, Facebook)
Und hier eine kleine Slideshow mit Fotos aus Facebook.
Die Petition der Familien
Die Ev. Mission in Solidarität (EMS) hat einige empfehlenswerte Beiträge zum 16.4. unter ALTUELLES von der Startseite aus.
Was man weiß vom Untergang der Sewol-Fähre
Families of South Korea ferry victims shave heads in compensation protest
Relatives demonstrate over government plans to start compensation process instead of launching fresh investigation into tragedy
Associated Press in Seoul, Thursday 2 April 2015
Dozens of relatives of victims of a South Korean ferry disaster that killed more than 300 people almost a year ago have shaved their heads in protest over government plans to provide compensation instead of a more thorough investigation.
Censorship? Self-censorship?
The State Secrets Protection Bill (2013)
Censorship? Self-censorship?
検閲? 自己検閲?
Thomas Ash and his documentary "A2-B-C"
March 14, 2015
検閲? 自己検閲?
配給会社都合により、急遽「A2-B-C」上映中止せざるを得なくなってしまいました。
The Japanese distributor of 'A2-B-C' (WEBSITE), my documentary about children living in Fukushima, is cancelling all domestic screenings of the film. They are also canceling the contract to distribute the film in Japan, despite there being more than two years remaining on the agreement.
It is not clear to me how much of this decision is the result of actual censorship and how much is self-censorship. My feeling is that it is self-censorship based on the fear of a potential censorship problem at some point in the future. If this is the case, then it is an example of the terrifying and wide-reaching effect of the Secrecy Law (INFO). This law does not even need to be enforced for its effect to be felt: its mere existence causes people to engage in self-censorship, imposing on themselves the very crackdown that the drafters of the legislation had surely envisioned.
2015: "Trostfrauen"-Frage in Schulbüchern
"Trostfrauen", "Comfort Women"
Erklärung über die Behandlung der "Trostfrauen"-Frage in Schulbüchern
Posted By Reinhard Zöllner On 10.2.2015
(For English version scroll down)
Als Historiker und Japanologen drücken wir unsere Bestürzung darüber aus, daß die japanische Regierung seit kurzem versucht, Feststellungen in Geschichtslehrbüchern in Japan und anderswo über die euphemistisch so genannten “Trostfrauen” zu unterdrücken, die während des Zweiten Weltkriegs im Dienst der japanischen Armee unter einem brutalen System sexueller Ausbeutung gelitten haben.
Historiker debattieren darüber, ob die Zahl der ausgebeuteten Frauen im Bereich von Zehntausenden oder Hundertausenden lag und welche Rolle das Militär bei ihrer Rekrutierung genau spielte. Doch die sorgfältigen Recherchen des Historikers Yoshimi Yoshiaki in japanischen Regierungsarchiven und die Zeugnisse von Überlebenden aus ganz Asien haben jeden Zweifel an den grundsätzlichen Zügen eines Systems, das staatlich geförderter sexueller Sklaverei gleichkam, beseitigt.
Als Teil ihrer Bemühungen, die patriotische Erziehung zu fördern, stellt die gegenwärtige Regierung von Ministerpräsident Shinzō Abe die gültige Geschichte der Trostfrauen buchstäblich infrage
Sink the Asahi! ... the Neo-nationalist Attack
The State Secrets Protection Bill (2013)
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 5, No. 1, February 2, 2015.
Hier geht's zur pdf-Datei
Mit freundlicher Erlaubnis von Japan Focus.
Sink the Asahi! The ‘Comfort Women’ Controversy and the Neo-nationalist Attack
How did Japan’s 135-year-old liberal flagship end up in the crosshairs of neo-nationalists?
David McNeill and Justin McCurry
Before last year it is doubtful that many Japanese knew the location of Glendale, California – an L.A. suburb with a population of 200,000 known for its large Asian population and the Big Boy fast-food chain. That’s changed, thanks to an unimposing bronze statue of a young woman installed last year in a local park that has become a microcosm of the toxic history war between Japan and South Korea.
The statue was meant to commemorate the suffering of women herded into wartime Japanese brothels – and to symbolize justice denied. Since the unveiling, however, the city has been targeted by diplomatic protests, hundreds of angry letters and a lawsuit demanding its removal. Japanese nationalist politicians even say the statue has triggered discrimination against Japanese schoolchildren in America.
The dispute took a farcical turn on Oct. 21 last year when Glendale City Council heard testimony from long-winded rightist video blogger Tony Marano. Marano travelled hundreds of miles from his home and took a break from warning against nefarious communists, Koreans who “eat dogs off the street” and President Obama’s plot to turn America into a Muslim nation, to pick up the cudgel against the hated memorial.
Hiroshima, Auschwitz und Erinnerung
Hiroshima und Auschwitz
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 3, No. 1, January 19, 2015.
Mit freundlicher Erlaubnis von Japan Fpcus
Zum Download als pdf hier
Never Again: Hiroshima, Auschwitz and the Politics of Commemoration
もう二度と… 広島、アウシュヴィッツと記念の政治学
Ran Zwigenberg
Abstract:
Ran Zwigenberg makes a case for revising the history of Hiroshima and its global connections and importance. Focusing on the little known episode of the 1962 Hiroshima-Auschwitz Peace March, he argues that the march was a unique point of convergence between multiple national narratives of victimization. The Peace March illustrates the emergence of a shared discourse of commemoration of WW II following the Eichmann trial and others, which agents like the marchers facilitated and which emerged from multiple Western and non-Western sources.
In 1962 a young Jewish American psychiatrist by the name of Robert Lifton visited the Hiroshima Peace Museum. Lifton described his visit to the museum in a letter to his friend David Riesman, “I had seen many such pictures before…but somehow seeing these pictures in Hiroshima was entirely different…we left this part of the exhibit reeling…Both of us anxious, fearful and depressed–Betty [Lifton’s wife] to the point of being physically ill.”1 Lifton decided to stay in Hiroshima and help its survivors. His research greatly altered our understanding of Hiroshima and the psychiatry of trauma. It would be hard to find similar responses by visitors today. The Liftons’ reaction to the museum was not just a function of their encounter with the horror of Hiroshima but of the heightened awareness of the importance of the city in light of the global tensions that would bring the world to the brink of nuclear war that same year. The museum and Peace Park today are far calmer places. Perhaps even too calm. The message of peace, felt so urgently by Lifton, has lost its edge in Hiroshima. Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani captured the mood of the place succinctly when he wrote, “In Hiroshima…even the doves are bored with peace.”2 The serenity and passivity of the memorial begins right at the entrance to the museum,
2014: Beyond Reality
Radioaktivität - Atomkraft
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 46, No. 1, November 24, 2014.
Download der pdf-Datei hier
Beyond reality – or – An illusory ideal: pro-nuclear Japan’s management of migratory flows in a nuclear catastrophe
Cécile Asanuma-Brice
Three years have passed since the earthquake and consequent tsunami of March 11, 2011, which led to the explosion of a nuclear power plant in Northeastern Japan. Since then, a central concern in managing the damage is how to handle the relocation of people displaced by the destruction of the earthquake-driven tsunami and the dangers of radiation. In December of that year, we wrote up a precise assessment of the damage caused to the housing sector, the system for rehousing victims of the tsunami, and also the nuclear contamination that has spread widely in part of the Fukushima region and neighboring districts.1 The government reported the existence of 160,000 displaced persons, of whom 100,000 came from within the prefecture and 60,000 outside of it. Since the government adopted a policy favoring the return of the displaced to their home districts, which are still heavily contaminated, the official estimate today is 140,000 refugees: 100,000 within the prefecture and 40,000 outside it. However, these official figures are the fruit of an extremely restrictive registration system, to which a not insignificant number of inhabitants have refused to submit.2 The displaced population is in fact appreciably greater than the official statistics would have us believe. What is the situation of nuclear refugees in Japan today? What local policies have been put in place to protect the inhabitants during these three years, as the government sought to manage a disaster of global proportions? What are the motivations of the authorities in seeking to compel the population to return to zones that are still partly contaminated, despite the ongoing risks and in the absence of any request to return? These are a few issues that I will seek to clarify in this paper.
Seeking Peace - The Korean Peninsula
Frieden auf der koreanischen Halbinsel
Seeking Peace: the World Council of Churches and the Korean Peninsula
World Council of Churches
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct12dXvW4q0
Veröffentlicht am 19.11.2014
The division of the Korean Peninsula and the Korean War marked the WCC since its beginnings in an era when, after the end of World War 2, the hope was that a more peaceful era would begin.
The efforts to find a response to the tragedy of division came into visible effect when, in 1984, the WCC's Commission of the Churches on International Affairs convened the founding consultation of the Tozanso Process. "At the time it was an act of prophetic courage" says the Rev. Prof. Dr Sang Chang of the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea, WCC president for Asia. During this period the Korean Christian Federation [based in the DPRK] became regular observers at WCC Assemblies. After the post-9/11 climate of dissipating possibilities for direct encounter, the WCC 10th Assembly in 2013 provided an opportunity for the wider international ecumenical community to become re-acquainted with the reality and consequences of the division of the Korean people.
Website of the WCC 10th Assembly: http://wcc2013.info
More information on the International Consultation on Justice, Peace and Reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula, June 2014: http://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-cen...