Endorse Now: Demand True Justice for the Victims of Sexual Crimes against Hisabetsu Nikkei Women

A posting from Trans-Pacific Research & Action Institute for the Hisabetsu Nikkei!
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Action Alert!!!
posted: March 03, 2008

TRAI and our Japanese allies are soliciting endorsements for the statement below.

Please submit organizational and individual endorsements with your full name, organizational affiliation (if any), and address (for identification purposes only) to TRAI-US at info@hisabetsunikkei.org!

The collected endorsements will be printed with the statement and delivered to Japanese Parliament by the TRAI-Tokyo office within the year.

For any questions, and to keep posted on developments, please email TRAI-US at info@hisabetsunikkei.org

Thank you for your solidarity and support. Please help us spread the word, and forward the link to this page to your friends and allies.

Check out the Protest Statement on the Violent Raid of the Women's Anti-War Museum in Tokyo, by the ultranationalist imperial vigilante protesters by TRAI-Japan by clicking here (Japanese): http://www.shinsugok.com/research/index.htm
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Demand True Justice for the Victims of Sexual Crimes against Hisabetsu Nikkei Women
March 02, 2008 Bay Area, CA, USA
Contact: miho kim, TRAI-US, info@hisabetsunikkei.org

We, Hisabetsu Nikkei (1) women (women of ethnic/racial and caste minority descent in Japan), condemn the Japanese government for its ongoing and systematic negligence of its fundamental duty in protecting Hisabetsu Nikkei women against ongoing acts of violence perpetrated against them and their feminist allies across the state of Japan.

The violent raid of the Women's Anti-War Museum (WAM) - a non-profit facility founded by feminist activists in Japan that displays invaluable historical evidence and testimonies of survivors of Japan's military sexual slavery - by an ultranationalist vigilante group in January, the rape of a 14-year old Okinawan girl and sexual assault of a Filipina in Okinawa both committed by US soldiers (yet again), and not surprisingly, the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators, are an impermissible violation of inherent rights of women to be free of sexual predatorial assault and to recourse for true justice and reclamation of full human dignity.

Japanese government has a stated duty to protect any person in its territories against ethnic exclusions that incur the effect of impairing the recognition, on equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms.(2) And yet, there is, beyond doubt, a clear disproportionate impact of Japan's increasingly visible agenda for remilitarization and continued militarization of Okinawa - upon Hisabetsu Nikkei women reflected in the ongoing, if not rising, acts of violence perpetrated against them with impunity.

The three incidents (among many to be sure), with no prospects of bringing justice for the victims, are an affront to all Hisabetsu Nikkei women, including the 'comfort women' enslaved by Japan's Imperial Army during WWII, and by systematically condoning mistreatment against them, the Japanese government shows its true colors: its colonial 'mentality' remains intact among Japan's ruling elites and the apathetic public, particularly in regards to female colonial subjects under Japan's dominant system of oppression, the Imperial ideology, known in Japanese as Tenno-sei.

For the Japanese dominant (Yamato) society, the three incidents and the outcomes (or lack thereof) help reinforce still-prevalent and profound prejudice against Hisabetsu Nikkei communities and women, long-justified by the teachings of the Tenno-sei. The ultranationalists are emboldened by Yamato racial/ethnic supremacism vis-a-vis Japan's neighbors throughout the Asia-Pacific - one of the key pillars of the teachings of Tenno-sei - that therefore justifies systemic subjugation of women and non-Yamato ethnic minorities. The US soldiers have seen a lenient sentencing for Lance Corporal (Daniel) Smith in the Philippines for the much publicized rape of a 22-year old Filipina in Subic Bay just last year, and now, Staff Sgt Tyrone Luther Hadnott accused of raping a 14-year old Okinawan girl is released, with the US soldier who violently assaulted and raped a Filipina in an Okinawa hotel just last month virtually immune from Japan's prosecution under US custody. Japan's cowardice, when it comes to ensuring the rights of Hisabetsu Nikkei women - historically considered inherently inferior to the Yamato peoples - in its territories, sends the message of impunity to the perpetrators and their colleagues loud and clear.

Until the end of WWII, atrocities against Hisabetsu Nikkei women were committed by Japanese and American colonizers competing over their ancestral territories that were Japan's colonies, such as Okinawa and Korea, among others. Today, Japan and the US are in collusion through the controversial US-Japan security alliance, keeping Hisabetsu Nikkei women practically in the same disempowered state they were during WWII, through colonial policies complemented by the many-faced apparatus (official and otherwise) of the bilateral alliance manifest in diverse, decentralized forms – ranging from the underlying messages of vigilante ultranationalist imperialist groups to the US military and the Japanese cronies aiding in the exoneration of US soldiers. Regardless of explicit intentinoalitiy, usurpation of the rights of Hisabetsu Nikkei women by Japanese or American imperialist forces contains beneficial properties for the preservation of the interests of Japan's ruling elites, as well as the bilateral security alliance that give them ample opportunities to access the bloody fruit of US empire-building efforts around the world, from the Philippines, North Korea, to Iraq.

Meanwhile, Hisabetsu Nikkei women within hostile Japanese territory are struggling just to have their stories validated as historical truths, let alone have their voices heard – to attain and exercise rightful entitlement to speak authoritatively about experiences of their elders and themselves to participate in shaping history, and roam the streets around their homes freely, without fear of intimidation or retaliation. The very absence of acknowledgment of, or adequate fulfillment and protection of such entitlements on the part of the Japanese government reinforce spiritual colonization and deep sense of defeat that render the very voices and experiences of the women a tear-jerking fiction of illusion, and the thought of collective self-determination and cultural sovereignty for their future generations a mere figment of a bygone dream at best.

The three incidents that violate Hisabetsu Nikkei women's bodies and dignity and the way in which they have been 'resolved' as mere isolated incidents with empty rhetoric and brilliant PR tactics by the officials of the government of Japan (and the US in the case of the rapes in Okinawa) all speak to a profound discriminatory disregard for women still subject to Japan's colonial apartheid. We expose the Japanese government as directly responsible for ongoing colonial subjugation of Hisabetsu Nikkei women, and appeal to the international community to demand that Japan urgently and immediately exercise its duty of fully respecting, protecting and ensuring the rights of Japan's ethnic minorities – particularly their women and girls, starting with immediate pursuit of true justice for WAM, the 'comfort women' whose voices the facility represents, and the victims of sexual assault in Okinawa.


Trans-Pacific Research & Action Institute for the Hisabetsu Nikkei (TRAI)

Footnotes:

(1) Hisabetsu Nikkei - 'Hisabets' in Japanese literally translates to 'discriminated-against' and 'Nikkei' is a common Japanese descriptive for Japanese origin, background, or descent. The term 'Hisabetsu Nikkei' was coined first in Japanese to respond to the absence of a term that referred collectively to a politically and socially constructed collective identity for communities oppressed in Japan by Japan's dominant system of oppression, the Imperial system or Tenno-sei. It is being adopted for use in English for the same reason - at least that TRAI women are aware of, there is no English word or phrase that carry this definition.
(2) Japan is a state party to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which states this state duty in its Article 1.

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Who comprise 'Hisabtsu Nikkei' in the state of Japan?

In the process of Japanese nation-state formation marked by the "Meiji Restoration" in 1868 and thereafter as an official imperial entity, the Japanese state took colonies inhabited by Ainu in Hokkaido, Okinawa and Korea. After Japan's defeat in the Pacific War, it was stripped of its colonial holdings in Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, and China. However, Hokkaido and Okinawa still remain within the Japanese state. Zainichi Koreans also remained within the postwar Japanese state, and continue to live there today while their ancestral "homeland" has been divided amongst other colonial powers. These peoples are subject to Japan's ongoing "assimilation policy" as a primary overarching strategy of continuing colonial rule, and maintain de facto superiority of the Yamato race.

The Buraku-min are descendants of those who were relegated to the 'untouchable' caste under the social stratification system that dates back to the feudal era in Japan. While Japan's insidious caste system was renounced formally by Japan's Meiji government more than a century ago, the Buraku-min continue to experience institutional barriers to achieving full liberation from their "non-human" subjugated caste.

Today, Japan is host to a rising number of migrant workers and refugees from countries around the world, many of whom are subject to interpersonal and institutional racism in various aspect of their lives. These people are the new faces among the Hisabetsu Nikkei and largely remain invisible and vulnerable to egregious exploitation and fundamental human rights violations.

What is TRAI?

TRAI is a bi-national (US-Japan) organization founded by zainichi Korean and Buraku women in 2006 with support of Okinawan allies to facilitate and promote capacity-building of the structurally and socially marginalized (Hisabetsu Nikkei) communities in the state of Japan and their diaspora, particularly in the U.S. and its territories, to address and resolve the root causes of injustices that affect them - the Tenno-sei or the Imperial ideology and system in particular as Japan's dominant system of racist/caste oppression, to achieve full social and political equity and cultural sovereignty.

The Hisabetsu Nikkei, we believe, are the living proof of the legacy of unresolved and continuing dominant system of oppression in Japan, Tenno-sei, or the Imperial, Yamato-supremacist ideology. In order to fully eradicate this systemic injustice, it is critical that the Hisabetsu Nikkei who can speak to it from their own first-hand experiences and historical knowledge articulate their own solutions, and effectively inject their voices in the decision-making processes around issues that impact them directly, with support of allies, and in solidarity with other peoples struggling for self-determination and decolonization around the world.