Japanische und Koreanische Regierung einigen sich: 28.12.2015

Statement from the Korean Council

28 December, 2015

The Official Statement from the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military
Sexual Slavery by Japan regarding the Agreement on the Military Sexual Slavery
(“Comfort Women”) Issue during the Korea-Japan Ministerial Meeting

Today’s meeting between the foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan concluded with an agreement on the resolution for the military sexual slavery issue. The survivors of the “Comfort Women” system as well as the Korean citizens sincerely hoped for the rightful resolution on the issue through this meeting, on the year which marks the 70th anniversary of Korea’s independence.

The Agreement specified that: first, Japanese government feels its responsibilities for the military sexual slavery; second, Prime Minister Abe apologizes as the representative of the Japanese government; and third, the Korean government establishes a foundation where Japanese government provides the funding while the two governments collaboratively manage initiatives.

Although the Japanese government announced that it “feels [its] responsibilities,” the statement lacks the acknowledgment of the fact that the colonial government and its military had committed a systematic crime. The government had not just been simply involved but actively initiated the activities which were criminal and illegal. Also, the apology was not directly made by the Prime Minister himself as the official representative of the government but was read by a diplomatic representative, while it was unclear to whom he was actually apologizing. Hence it is hard to believe if it was a sincere apology.

In addition, the announcement specified that Korean government will be responsible

Japanische und Koreanische Regierung einigen sich: 28.12.2015

Beide Regierungen geben Erkärungen zur Einigung in Bezug auf die "Trostfrauen"-frage ab. 

I.  Erklärung des japanischen Außenministeriums zur Trostfrage

Über die Trostfrauen-Frage zwischen Japan und Südkorea haben bislang u.a. die Büroleiter intensive Beratungen durchgeführt. Auf deren Ergebnissen fußend, gebe ich namens der japanischen Regierung die folgende Erklärung ab.

(1) Die Trostfrauen-Frage hat, unter Beteiligung der damaligen Armee, Ehre und Würde zahlreicher Frauen zutiefst verletzt. Unter diesem Gesichtspunkt fühlt sich die japanische Regierung schmerzlich verantwortlich.
Ministerpräsident Abe spricht als Ministerpräsident von Japan erneut allen Personen gegenüber, die als Trostfrauen viele Leiden und Schmerzen erfuhren und an Leib und Seele schwer heilbare Wunden davontrugen, von ganzem Herzen die Bitte um Entschuldigung und das Gefühl selbstkritischer Reue aus.

(2) Die japanische Regierung, die sich auch bisher dieses Problems ernsthaft angenommen hatte, ergreift jetzt auf der Grundlage dieser Erfahrungen aus dem Haushalt der japanischen Regierung Maßnahmen, welche die seelischen Wunden aller ehemaligen Trostfrauen heilen sollen. Konkret wird die südkoreanische Regierung eine Stiftung errichten, die den ehemaligen Trostfrauen Unterstützung leisten soll und für welche aus dem japanischen Regierungshaushalt einmalig Kapital aufgebracht wird; beide Regierung führen in Zusammenarbeit Projekte durch, um die Ehre und Würde der ehemaligen Trostfrauen wiederherzustellen und ihre seelischen Wunden zu heilen.

(3) Die japanische Regierung stellt zugleich mit der obigen Erklärung fest, daß unter der Voraussetzung der getreuen Umsetzung der oben unter (2) genannten Maßnahmen durch diese Erklärung dieses Problem endgültig und unumkehrbar gelöst wird.
Zudem verzichten die japanische Regierung und die südkoreanische Regierung darauf, hernach in den Vereinten Nationen oder in der Völkergemeinschaft einander zu bedrängen oder zu kritisieren.

Fukushima - 4 Jahre danach: 11.03.2015
Quelle:  The Japan Times, December 17, 2015, AP

No promises in Fukushima cleanup, director says

BY YURI KAGEYAMA

The man leading the daunting task of dealing with the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant warns with surprising candor: Nothing can be promised.

How long will it take to decommission the three breached reactors, and how

Okinawa. Henoko. Camp Schwab. 
Quelle: The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue. 47, No. 4, December 7, 2015
Mit freundlicher Erlaubnis von Japan  Focus

To the Courts! To the Streets! Okinawa at December 2015

Gavan McCormack

Introduction

As this Asia-Pacific Journal site (and its associated publications) has repeatedly demonstrated, Okinawa is a unique joint US-Japanese colony, that has endured 70 years of lying, deception, manipulation, discrimination, abuse and contempt from the Tokyo-based nation state. But it has also generated an opposition movement of world-historical significance on the part of the Okinawan people. That movement remains little understood internationally. The accompanying “position paper” by the “All Okinawa Council”1 is one recent initiative to try to remedy the situation.
What follows here is a resume of recent developments in the “Okinawa problem,” through the prism of the contradiction between the nation state headed by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and the prefecture headed by the Governor, Onaga Takeshi, followed by a consideration of the three major dimensions of the ongoing struggle between them: in the realms of information, the law, and the physical confrontation at the Henoko site. The multi-faceted struggle enters a phase

Okinawa. Henoko. Camp Schwab. 
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue. 41, October 19, 2015

Please, see also former appeals from Okinawa/Henoko
Read this article as pdf.

In-depth critical analysis of the forces shaping the Asia-Pacific...and the world.
Urgent Okinawan Appeal for Help
Oct. 17, 2015

Ashitomi Hiroshi

[Henoko] Council against the Helicopter Base

Introduced by Gavan McCormack and translated by Doug Lummis

Introduction

To Japan and to the world Japan is a democratic country, in which popular sovereignty, the rule of law, and the division of powers (executive, legislative, judicial) are assured. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has repeatedly told international fora – including the US Congress and the UN General Assembly – that such is the case. But what is evolving now in the course of confrontation between the Abe government and the people of Okinawa, led by their Governor, suggests otherwise.
 
Okinawa’s travail, in its present, intense form, owes to the determination of the Abe government to overrule the overwhelming Okinawan consensus it confronted on taking office (for the second time) in December 2012 that no new base should be constructed in the prefecture. Such a view first surfaced in 1996, as soon as the Henoko plan was announced. Under the government design, a major military facility would be constructed on Oura Bay (Henoko district) for the US Marine Corps, to which the existing, obsolescent and inconvenient Futenma Marine Base, currently set in the middle of Ginowan City, could be transferred. By 2012 the Okinawan consensus of opposition to that design was overwhelming, shared even by the Okinawan members of Abe’s ruling LDP, the Governor, and the heads of almost all Okinawan towns and cities. Never in Japan’s modern history had any prefecture so unanimously opposed the central government on a matter of such moment.

Fukushima - 4 Jahre danach: 11.03.2015
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue. 41, No. 1, October 19, 2015

Inside Fukushima's Potemkin Village: Naraha

David McNeill, Androniki Christodoulou

Twice a year, journalists are taken on guided tours of the ruined Daiichi nuclear plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO). The drive there from the southern outskirts of the 20-kilometer exclusion zone imposed in 2011 took them through the nearly empty towns of Hirono, Naraha, Tomioka, Okuma and Futaba. The state of neglect could be measured by the encroachment of weeds and wild animals, and the slow decrepitude of housing and infrastructure.
Despite the decline and the still urgent beeping of Geiger counters nearer the plant, there has never been any official talk of abandoning the area. Instead, it was divided up into three zones with awkward euphemisms to suggest just the opposite: communities with radiation of 20 millisieverts (mSv) or less (the typical worldwide limit for workers in nuclear plants) are “being prepared for lifting of evacuation order;” 20-50 mSv are “no-residence zones;” the most heavily contaminated (50mSv) are “difficult-to-return.”
A vast public-works project was started three years ago to decontaminate an area roughly half the size of Rhode Island, at an estimated cost of $50 billion. Compensation by TEPCO was explicitly linked to the possibility that many of the 160,000 nuclear refugees would return,

2015 - 70 Jahre nach den Atombomben auf Hiroshima und Nagasaki
und 4 Jahre nach Fukushima
Quelle:    09.09.2015, http://wp.me/pp3Fm-1hp

Japans oberstes Gericht spricht koreanischen Atombombenopfern Hilfeleistungen zu

by Reinhard Zöllner
09.09.2015, http://wp.me/pp3Fm-1hp

70 Jahre nach dem Abwurf der Atombomben auf Hiroshima und Nagasaki haben nun auch deren nicht-japanischen Opfer das Recht erstritten, ihre dabei erlittenen Leiden in Japan kostenlos medizinisch behandeln zu lassen. Dieses Recht steht gesetzlich allen Atombombenopfern (hibakusha 被爆者) zu -- gleich, wo sie leben und welche Staatsangehörigkeit sie besitzen, stellte am 8.9.2015 Japans Oberster Gerichtshof fest. Bislang hatten Japans Regierung und die zuständigen Präfekturen den betroffenen Ausländern -- von denen die meisten Koreaner sind -- diese Leistungen versagt. In vielen Fällen wurden bisher lediglich bis zu 300.000 Yen im Jahr (ca. 2.250 Euro) als Ersatzleistung gezahlt,