Allegations of money laundering within the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) appear to have dashed hopes that the ruling party would distinguish itself from the scandal-plagued conservative administration that had ruled Japan for almost half a century.

DPJ secretary general Ichiro Ozawa is under investigation by the Public Prosecutors’ Office for his political funding group’s questionable land purchase in 2004.

Money used to buy the land, which amounted to over 4 million U.S. dollars, allegedly came from illegally obtained corporate donations, specifically from a construction firm building a dam in Ozawa’s home prefecture, Iwate.

The company’s executives had confessed to paying 500,000 dollars to an aide of Ozawa as a donation after being awarded a contract to build a dam in Iwate, located in Tohoku region on Honshu island, Japan’s main island, which comprises the cities of Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Yokohama.

Pressures have been brought to bear on Ozawa to come clean on the Rikuzankai funds.

According to some polls, public approval ratings for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s cabinet have dropped by double digits to 40 percent from 50 percent last December since news of arrests related to the scandal broke over the weekend.

Other polls show a groundswell of public opinion, hovering around 70 percent, that Ozawa should resign from his post and take responsibility for the scandal.

Ozawa is widely credited with steering the erstwhile opposition party to a resounding victory in August, bringing an end to the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) once monolithic political dominance.

A one-time member of the LDP, Ozawa led the DPJ until an earlier funding scandal forced him to step down as party president early last year, when his former right-hand man Yukio Hatoyama took over the party leadership.

In addition to falling approval ratings, the scandal seems to signal to Japanese voters that the DPJ is no different from the LDP, which was ousted as the main ruling party in last year’s lower house election.

“The priority for me is the economy and unemployment,” said Hiro Fujita, a businessman in his 30s. “He should resign, so the government can focus on the economy.”

A middle-aged housewife said, “He should explain it in our language … he owes it to the people.”

“It’s politics as usual, just as corrupt. I think he should resign,” said Yushi Komatsu, a university student.

But the DPJ stalwart seems undeterred by a swelling chorus of calls for his resignation. He refuses to resign, vowing to continue performing his public duties.

“I absolutely cannot accept what has happened,” said a defiant Ozawa, 67, referring to the arrests, during the first national convention of the DPJ, held on Saturday, since the new government came to power four months ago.

Three of his former aides were arrested on charges of misreporting campaign donations. One of them is 36-year-old Tomohiro Ishikawa, a lower house member who belongs to the DPJ.

“The arrests were conducted to match the timing of our party convention. I cannot accept this. If this is allowed, the future of Japanese democracy will be very dark,” he exclaimed during the convention. The third arrest was made during the gathering.

The arrests are likely to negatively impact how DPJ will fare in a crucial mid- year election, due in July.

“The money laundering scandal surrounding Ichiro Ozawa and his political fundraising organisation, Rikuzankai, is extremely damaging to the DPJ-led government in Japan, said Weston Konishi, adjunct fellow at the Washington- based Mansfield Foundation, an independent organisation that promotes understanding and cooperation among the nations and peoples of Asia and the United States

“Unless Ozawa can provide a convincing argument that he was in no way involved in the money laundering operation, it seems likely that he will indeed have to resign, ending a long and storied career of one of the most influential politicians in recent Japanese history.”

As secretary general of the DPJ, the beleaguered ruling party stalwart is also the key campaign strategist for the upcoming upper house elections.

Without Ozawa’s campaign expertise, there are fears the DPJ will not be able to gain enough seats in the next parliamentary elections – deemed key to shedding its coalition partners so it can fully implement its legislative agenda, noted Konishi. The administration’s proposed 7.2 trillion yen (79 billion dollars) stimulus package may also be derailed as a result of the scandal.

“If the Hatoyama administration cannot present itself as a ‘cleaner’ alternative, it may allow the LDP to make a political comeback,” said Konishi.

Konishi also warned that a sizable bloc of the DPJ, known as the ‘Ozawa Children’, will also be tainted by their association with the powerful secretary general and the Rikuzankai scandal. “If some of them are at all implicated directly in the scandal, it could significantly hollow out the rank-and-file of the DPJ,” he said.

At the televised DPJ convention, Ozawa, reacting to the allegations against him and his party, railed against the prosecutors, accusing them of conducting a “politically motivated” investigation.

Miki Tanikawa, an expert on Japan’s international relations and history, belied his claim.

“Some say that prosecutors, who are bureaucrats, didn’t like the idea of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama trying to curtail the power of bureaucrats. Prosecutors have different roles than administrative bureaucrats and they could care less about Hatoyama’s bureaucratic reform, which doesn’t try to limit the powers of the prosecutors at all.”

Hatoyama was swept into power on a campaign platform to rein in the unbridled power of the Japanese bureaucracy, which includes prosecutors who enjoy vast powers.

Prosecutors are still dependent on government expenditures, but their first concern is that they remain powerful and independent and are able to arrest corrupt politicians, Tanikawa explained.

He added that by showing their prosecutorial muscles, prosecutors maintain their morale and feel good about themselves. “That’s the tradition of Japanese prosecutors.”

Amid the scandal, Hatoyama has stood behind Ozawa. He said he believes and trusts Ozawa and the “party has to stick together in solidarity” against the serious accusations against the latter.

Still, some members of the local media have claimed that cracks have begun to show within the DPJ, some of whose members believe he should resign.

Notwithstanding the sentiments within the party, the DPJ’s tarnished image does not bode well for a party that once presented itself as a reformist to a people that had long been alienated from politics.

Greater interaction and integration are crucial to easing social tensions in countries that are host to a growing number of migrants, experts say.

The most recent example of such conflicts was in Italy, where riots flared up in southern Calabria this month after hundreds of migrant workers, mostly from Africa, protested the beatings of some of them.

Worries over long-term social fabric are forcing many countries to examine and reshape their migration policies, paying more attention to issues of language, suspicion, integration and social support, according to migration experts from Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Taiwan and Singapore who spoke at a symposium on the challenges of social integration policies here Thursday.

“One of the main ‘universal’ challenges facing migrants is that of cultural adaptation,” Guidikova, head of the Council of Europe’s division for cultural policy, diversity and dialogue, told the discussion organised by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation as part of its series on global demographic change and labour migration in Asia.

“I would not dwell on classical challenges such as access to work, health care, education, but would mention specifically cultural challenges which seem to be, to a degree, common to all migrants,” she said.

The challenges migrants face depend a lot on their situation: whether they are residing legally in the host country, are skilled and have dependents and family, she explains.

The lack of knowledge about migrant cultures and suspicion of those perceived to be ‘outsiders’ can be addressed by better contact and interaction between different cultural communities.

“These may involve community events, open celebrations of holy days, or secular feasts of different groups, events which highlight migrant languages, cuisine or family customs, portraits of migrants in media and other events,” Guidikova said.

“Cultural conflict also requires the use of intercultural mediators, ideally both outreach mediators in the neighbourhoods, and specialists in dedicated mediation centres,” she added.

Supporting migrant associations, especially those that foster links between migrants and the host community, is a clever strategy of empowerment and building social capital, Guidikova noted.

In South Korea and Taiwan, both of which receive large numbers of migrant workers from elsewhere in Asia, governments have launched social integration policies for marriage migrants.

In Taiwan, migrant spouses now make up more than 17 percent of marriages, according to Tseng Yen Fen, a professor of sociology at National Taiwan University.

Migrant spouses also make up 20 percent of all divorce cases, Tseng said. But Taiwan, after years of campaigning by women’s rights activists, has a regulation that protects those who experienced domestic violence. “They can break from their marriages without having to fear losing their legal residency rights, Tseng said. Migrants also have universal health coverage.

Japan, a homogenous society where migrants are often a touchy issue, does not have a policy on migrant marriages. The country’s more than 2 million registered foreigners make up about 1.6 percent of its more than 127 million people.

While Japan’s local municipal units and non-government organisations have implemented a variety of measures to address migrants’ needs and human rights, the government has not enacted social integration legislation.

Japan’s biggest migrant groups are North and South Koreans, Chinese and Brazilians with Japanese ancestry.

But most Japanese are not even aware of the migration situation because the media do not report it and politicians will not talk about it, explains Kazumi Miyazaki of the advocacy group Global Community. “We are confused about what our policy is on migration,” he said. “Decisions are made at the spur of the moment about them.”

But there is one city – Minokamo — that is known for having implemented new measures for its migrant population with the help of the city council, local residents, volunteers, civic organisations and school staff.

Seventeen percent of the more than 55,000 residents of Minokamo, located in Gifu prefecture in central Japan, are non-Japanese. They include a mix of Brazilians of Japanese descent, Filipino and Chinese migrants.

“We are truly an international city,” said Yoshimi Sakai, head of the lifelong learning division of the citizen cooperation department of Minokamo and director of the Central Community Hall there.

The local government has a multicultural community plan through which it aims “to have respect for human rights, to participate in a multicultural community as a social member and offer support to become independent”.

As part of this, local officials say the city has hired interpreters, held discussions and hosted ‘friendship groups’, so that Japanese and migrants stand equal as Minokamo residents.

Sakai adds that the city has special classes for foreign children to help them learn about Japanese life and culture and adapt to their new home, as well as to learn the Japanese language. But because school education is not compulsory for foreign children in Japan, it is difficult to understand the “education condition” of children who do not attend public schools, Sakai says.

The economic recession has also led to job losses among some migrants – a March 2009 survey by Minokamo city shows that 30 percent of Brazilians and half of Filipino migrants there are now unemployed — and this adds pressure on society.

Hard times become even harder because many migrant residents do not speak Japanese or understand the culture well enough.

Even in a more open community like Minokamo, a survey among its Japanese residents — discussed at the Thursday symposium — shows that challenges remain.

Asked how they feel about more foreigners in their community, only 2.9 percent said they have a “close foreign friend”, 10.2 percent have talked to a foreigner, almost half were anxious about the increase of foreign residents in their neighbourhood, and 1.3 percent said they thought it was a good thing to have foreigners in their neighborhood.

“It’s a challenge,” Sakai admitted. “We should share these problems with other nations.”

Junichi Akashi, associate professor at University of Tsukuba, says Japan does not feel a need to change since it is a homogeneous society and politicians rarely talk about immigration.

“For example, we have an ageing society but most Japanese say migrants will age as well, ” he explained. “The population will decrease, but they say things will balance out. Bringing in more migrants would only be temporary fix. It doesn’t mean Japanese are prejudiced, it’s that migrants are not their priority.”

Looking ahead, he says more migration could help open what has been a closed society. “Opening the door would be something good for Japan,” Akashi said. “It would open the mindset of Japan and the opening wouldn’t be a negative outcome.”

Japan’s first sex crime trial under the new lay judge system finished in September amid large-scale media attention that troubled the female victims.

The two women, who were raped and robbed, wavered on testifying because they were worried about their privacy. The defendants were sentenced to 15 years in prison.

According to Noriko Moriya, lawyer and associate professor of crime victim studies at Tokiwa University, little thought was given to the feelings of these two women who were seriously troubled by the attention given to the case.

Under the new system, six citizens are randomly chosen from a list of eligible voters to sit on the bench with three professional judges and pass judgments for serious crimes, including murder. They are also allowed to question witnesses and help decide the sentence. This was implemented in May 2009.

In First PersonJane, as she calls herself, was raped by a U.S. Navy sailor in 2002 in Japan. “I was concerned when I heard that the privacy of rape victims would not be taken into consideration, as lay judges would have first hand knowledge of rape victims addresses and other such personal details,” she said. “I deem that addresses of rape victims are unnecessary in finding a rapist guilty in the courtroom and that if the authorities really want rape victims to come forward with our testimonies then our privacy should be protected. “I was also shocked that my case against the Kanagawa Police, (who had kept me captive at their police station for at least 14 hours since I was raped), at the Supreme Court came to an abrupt end when the media called me for comments for my case. “Apparently it seems that in Japan, the privacy of rape victims is never taken into consideration, as in my own case, the first persons to whom my case hearing judgment conclusions was told was not I, not my legal team, but to the public and the mass media. “My only thoughts to the media at that time was ‘no comment’ as I was in shock that the courts of Japan would have totally disregarded the rights of rape victims that had come forward to help others in society by reporting the rape against them. “I feel that the courts of Japan have made a mockery of rape victims and the new system will only deter rape victims from speaking out against the crimes that have occurred against them, moreover rapists will be able to roam free as they have in my own case, ready to rape again, until true justice rings through the air.”

There weren’t any measures taken to protect the privacy of women from the citizen judges. The women’s personal information, such as name and age and detailed accounts of the damage they suffered were also revealed to them, Moriya noted. While the two women testified from separate rooms through a videoconference system, the lay judges could see their faces through a monitor placed before them.

There was also intense media coverage on this case. Furthermore, lay judges are ordinary people who are susceptible to media bias. Japanese lay judges are not sequestered, and go home everyday.

A Kyoto News poll found 90.3 percent of respondents of the opinion that news articles will influence lay judges and 62.8 percent agree with some judges and lawyers who said crime reporting needs to be changed to make sure the media do not sway lay judges. Japan’s parliament dropped a provision calling on the media to exercise caution in influencing readers and viewers when reporting on crimes.

The Asia-Japan Women’s Resource Centre and other women’s rights groups are up in arms that the names of sex crime victims and details of assaults on them could be released during the selection process for lay judges.

Prejudice against female sex crime victims is deep-rooted in Japanese society. It is not uncommon for victims to become targets of unjust defamation, causing secondary damage. The fact is, a large number of victims do not even report the crime or file criminal complains because their privacy would be violated.

Japan’s Gender Equality Bureau in 2006 released a study finding that of 1,578 female respondents about 7 percent said they had been raped, at least once. Of those, only about 5 percent – 6 out of 114 – reported the crime to the police. Of those who remained silent, nearly 40 percent said they were “embarrassed.”

“The danger of this information leaking out cannot be ruled out,” Moriya said. “The methods that could infringe on the privacy of victims and cause further harm in court proceedings must be abolished.”

In some cases, victims of sex crimes gave up reporting to police and going to court because they didn’t want a trial under the citizen judge system. They also hesitate because they believe their details could be passed on to complete strangers and even end up on the Internet. Instead they opted for out-of-court settlements.”

Possible SolutionsCreate environments in which female survivors of sex crimes will not hesitate to report crimes to authorities and seek prosecution. A system of fair trails that do not subject female survivors to further damage by invading their privacy. Present the facts of the crime in writing instead of verbally testifying could be another solution. Measures designed to alleviate the burden on victims should be studied and discussed. For example, a balance in the number of male and female citizen judges should be carefully considered.

Moriya calls these serious sex crimes offenses the “murder of the soul”, and condemns the further violation of their privacy by the citizen judge system.

Dr. Hisako Watanabe, a child psychiatrist and assistant professor at Keio University in Tokyo who has treated rape victims, including small children, for 35 years, says rape against women is seen as one of the most shameful experiences in Japan.

In fact, Keiko Otsu, a committee member of the Tokyo Women’s Shelter, says Japanese courts are usually harder on women than men. In domestic violence cases women she believes women who bring charges of domestic violence often suffer degrading treatment from the police, lawyers, mediators and judges involved in their cases.

Invading their privacy during the trial under the current lay justice system could be more detrimental than the trauma of the sex crime itself. A rape victim, who requested not to be identified, agreed. She says the new system does not protect a woman’s privacy.

“I came in court through the same door as my perpetrator and spectators,” she told IPS. “I had asked the court that my name not be revealed. But my perpetrator’s lawyer shouted and screamed at me, and intentionally told the court my real name and address.”

She challenged the judge about this, but he didn’t take her complaints seriously. She wants people to know what is happening in the Japanese court system.

“The rights of women need to be protected,” she says. “The court and the police department won’t protect us. You need to be strong and determined to get through this.”

Tomoko Ando and her husband divorced because she refused to quit her job as a lawyer and start a family. The shortage of daycare centres has created a dilemma for women like Ando who want to continue working, but also start a family.

Mari Miura: "Even though women want to get back to work earlier, it is sometimes impossible due to the shortage of day care." Credit: Mari Miura

“It was a painful decision,” said the 35-year old. “I worked hard to become a lawyer and didn’t want to give up my career. I would be left in charge of raising the children and doing the housework.”

Many women in Japan have to quit their jobs because there is a shortage of daycare facilities. More than 25,384 children are on waiting lists. The new government plans to come up with an overall plan by the end of January to help cut the waiting lists.

According to Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 42 percent of women don’t return to their jobs after childbirth. Only 7 percent of men help with household chores, while 90 percent of wives do all the work, according to the government’s White Papers on Gender Equality 2009.

Since the 1970s as major socioeconomic changes took place in Japan, women delayed marriage and had fewer children. The average number of children per family is 1.3; the nation has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. The average age for marrying today is 28, an upward rise of 2.7 over the past 20 years.

According to the Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry, out of the total population of men and women over the age of 15, 24.04 percent of women are participating in the workplace.

“It is true, that there is little space for working mothers in the workplace,” says Mari Miura of Sophia University in Tokyo. “But the situation for women has improved, as now there is child care leave, daycares in workplaces, flexibility with schedules, and the right to refuse night shifts.”

In addition, Japan has adequate maternity leave, six weeks prior and eight weeks after childbirth, however daycare centres are what is lacking.

“It is nice to be able to spend time with babies for such a long time, but in terms of career information, such a long interruption harms women,” Miura says “Even though women want to get back to work earlier, it is sometimes impossible due to the shortage of day care.” It’s also expensive to provide day care services to 0-1 year old children.

It is also difficult for women to strike a balance between work and their home life due to long working hours, “This puts strong psychological pressure on working women,” Miura told IPS.

Then there’s discrimination which women encounter. It starts at the level of recruitment; many companies have a multiple career track system (employment management categories). The first track is the top tier and so on. Women hired in the first track are extremely low.

The reason only a few women are hired for the first track is because it requires women to work long hours and accept a company’s orders to relocate. Although they have the right to refuse overtime work, someone else would have to do the job for them.

The other problem, she says, is that over half of Japanese women are non-regular workers. “Basically, non-regular workers are not able to claim the rights that female regular workers are granted.”

It’s in the home where women have power. They are the decision makers. Usually it is the women’s role to control the family’s budget while men are busy at work to shoulder family responsibility.

Sandra Shoji, an instructor at Tokyo International University, after talking to students and observing neighbours’ kids, believes the trend for women marrying later is changing because of the economic recession, fewer jobs and lower salaries.

Female students now want to secure both a job and a husband for financial security and emotional support. Many girls think that their chances for finding a full-time job in this economy are low.

“So,” Shoji says, “with all this tiresome and incessant job-hunting – it is much more exiting to day-dream about getting married. Especially since being a housewife in Japan is considered to be an honourable, full-time job.”

Housewives can wear the clothes they want, decorate their houses and have cute babies. They daydream about shopping with their married girlfriends while pushing their babies in fashionable baby strollers.

In trains, women read books and magazines about catching a husband. They go to speed-dating parties to find a possible husband who is a few years older than they are and has a full-time job.

“I was surprised to find more female university students dating blue collar workers,” Shoji says. “They are looking for a husband with a track record of employment, which is more difficult to find these days.”

Sachiko Yamada has been hoping to spend her retirement years traveling and living the good life. Today she devotes her time to taking care of her 90-year- old mother five days a week, leaving her with two days off while her mother goes to a care centre for the elderly.

Kaoru Arai (left), 88, feels lucky that she is still healthy and lives with her son, Kiyoshi (right). Credit: Catherine Makino/IPS

“I owned my company and worked hard for many years, but now I have to take care of my mother,” said the 65-year-old Yamada. Her mother is on a waiting list for a facility providing nursing and medical care.

Not that she would rather be pursuing her own interests than being with her mother in her remaining years, but Yamada’s dilemma highlights the dearth of government-run elderly facilities in Japan—a problem brought on by a steadily aging society—and government’s apparent inability to keep up with a growing demand for elderly care facilities that are readily affordable to the average folk, especially during economic crunch.

“It used to be that families took care of the elderly, but because they live much longer now, there are more problems,” said Dr Nobuhiko Ishida, who owns clinics, retirement and care centres throughout Japan.

“There aren’t enough facilities to take care of them all, and there’s usually a waiting list to get into the geriatric hospitals.” Given the dilemma facing Japan today, Dr Ishida added, “The old are left taking care of the old due to a shortage of facilities.”

No less than recently elected Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has expressed concern about the social and economic consequences of the trend: a growing pension and health care costs, lower saving and investment rates, and a shrinking work force. These factors combined have renewed debate on Japan’s immigration policy. Historically, because of its homogeneity, Japanese society views outsiders with suspicion.

At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO summit held in this capital last month, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama addressed the delicate issue of reforming the country’s strict immigration policies.

“I think Japan should make itself a country attractive to people so that more and more people, including tourists, hope to visit Japan, hope to live and work in Japan,” he said. “I am not sure if I can call this immigration policy, but in recent years Japan has cautiously opened up its job market to nurses and care workers from some Southeast Asian countries.”

But, Hatoyama said, before addressing immigration, the government should first solve the problem of the country’s low birth rate. Based on data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the average number of children per family is around 1.3, and women are choosing to marry late.

The Hatoyama administration also seeks to overhaul the medical insurance system for elderly people. Health, labor and welfare minister Akira Nagatsuma said the current system for people over 75 years old would be abolished. The newly designed one would be realistic. He did not disclose any specifics, though.

In its campaign manifesto the DPJ had pledged to increase the number of doctors across Japan by a whopping 50 percent, compensate those affected by vanishing pensions and establish a system whereby every person can receive a pension. “We will provide adequate medical and long-term care services and will value every person’s life,” said DPJ.

Based on a survey conducted by Kyodo News in September, nearly 60 percent of lower house members from the DPJ believe the government should “eventually consider raising sales taxes in the future to drastically reform the pension system, a growing social welfare expense amid the nation’s declining birth rate and aging population.”

Kaoru Arai, 88, considers herself lucky that at her age she is relatively healthy and still lives with her son and daughter-in-law. She gets together with her friends a few times a week. They sing, dance, eat, drink ‘sake’ (rice wine) and talk about the good old days, she said. “We usually have it at the hot springs, so we can enjoy the baths too,” she added, beaming.

Unfortunately, Kaoru Arai makes up a segment of Japan’s aging population that does not need elderly health care services as much as Yamada’s mother does.

Dr Ishida said many of the elderly in Japan do not have a good quality of life like Arai. “Many older Japanese suffer from bad health and end up spending their time in bed,” he added. “There are about 700,000 elderly throughout Japan who are bedridden.”

The mutual support custom of families taking care of their elderly is declining and it puts more pressure on the government to care for the elderly. Social welfare has not worked because it is inadequate to meet the existing demands, given the growing elderly population and since many people cannot afford the cost of hospital services, said Ishida.

Due to sorely limited elderly care services and society’s seeming inability to adequately deal with the issue of aging, some of the elderly suffering from Alzheimer’s disease are tied to beds to stop them from getting up and walking around, he said.

He said one out of four people in Japan will become elderly soon, so the most important thing is to prevent them from becoming bedridden, getting Alzheimer’s or other diseases. The bottom line is that Japan needs to work on preventing these illnesses from middle age on, he said.

Ishida believes there is not much hope that counter measures will stop the declining population, which means Japan needs to adopt more family-friendly policies.

“For example, the [government-mandated] retirement age of 60 years is way too soon because these people are left with nothing to do,” he said. “We need to change many of our current structures and systems.” Despite the mandatory retirement, many Japanese companies allow their employees to continue working over the age of 60.

The biggest challenge for Japan will involve sustaining output growth and preventing a decline in the standards of living despite a contraction in the labour supply, according to a report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), ‘Aging in Asia’, which was released in February.

“Education reforms will also be needed to help young adults enter the labour forces, removing barriers to the participation of women; and increasing mandatory retirement age, or scrapping it altogether,” said the report.

The ADB warned that Japan needs to reform its current structures to meet the challenges of an aging society—and that requires a big head start, it said.

Setting foot on the Land of Cherry Blossom over the weekend, U.S. President Barack Obama waxed nostalgic, recalling his first visit to Japan as a young boy, when his mother brought him there.

“I have never forgotten the warmth and the hospitality that the Japanese people showed a young American far from home,” he said.

But more than the nostalgia, what struck a harmonious chord in the audience that came to listen to his much-awaited speech on his first state visit to Japan was an earnest promise he made—that is, to move toward “a more balanced relationship with Asia”—a direction that to many contrasted with the previous Bush administration’s.

Obama said, “the United States may have started a series of ports and cities along the Atlantic Ocean, but for generations we have also been a nation of the Pacific,” noting U.S. and the region are bound by this “great ocean.” He added: “We are bound by our past—by the Asian immigrants who helped build America… We are bound by Asian Americans who enrich every segment of American life, and all the people whose lives, like our countries, are interwoven.”

In his keynote speech on Saturday at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Obama conceded that the U.S. was dependent on the Asian economy. Hence he vowed to pursue greater trade with Asia. He specifically highlighted the important role that the U.S.-Japan relations would play in bringing his administration’s aspirations for the Asia-Pacific region to fruition.

“Our efforts in the Asia-Pacific will be rooted, in so small measure, through an enduring and revitalised alliance between the United Sates and Japan,” he said.

“Since taking office, I have worked to renew American leadership and pursue a new era of engagement with the world based on mutual interests and mutual respect, ” he declared. “We believe that continued integration of economies in Asia will benefit all nations.”

Obama remarked that one of the lessons of the recession that hit the U.S. and then the rest of the globe last year to the American society was the limits of depending primarily on American consumers and Asian exports to drive growth.

China necessarily forms part of that picture of a “balanced relationship with Asia.” In his speech, Obama said he welcomed “China’s appearance on the world stage as a growing economic force.

“The U.S. does not seek to contain China; the rise of a strong and prosperous China can be a source of prosperity for all nations,” he said. He added that the two countries might not agree on issues such as human rights and religious freedom, but they can work together without malice.

Such cordiality was not to be extended to North Korea. Obama said if the reclusive regime stopped building nuclear weapons and got rid of the ones it already has, the United Nations sanctions would end and it could “come out from the cold and isolation.”

He warned that North Korea should return to the Six-Party Talks—a multi- country forum for discussing and negotiating North Korea’s nuclear programmes—and pursue nuclear nonproliferation. “For decades North Korea has chosen a path of confrontation and provocation. It should be clear where this road leads,” he said.

The six-party talks consist of South Korea, Russia, Japan, China, the United States and, until it bolted the forum in April this year, North Korea. Since the talks began in April 2003, numerous rounds of negotiations had been conducted. These led to a September 2005 agreement in which Pyongyang agreed to abandon its quest to become a nuclear power, only to renege on its commitment when it decided to quit the forum.

Koij Murata, a professor of international security studies at Doshisha University, noted that President Obama’s speech was well received, having been interrupted more than a dozen times by applause and even getting a standing ovation at the end.

“It was a positive step,” he said of Obama’s diplomatic pronouncements, which included his remarks at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama Friday night. Yet he found Obama’s and even the Japanese premier’s speeches short on specifics.

“They are good at talking about global issues such as a nuclear-free world, climate change, and energy, but they don’t talk about new initiatives,” he said. “Instead, they avoided answering these immediate bilateral issues.”

Such issues included the succeeding steps the U.S. and Japan are expected to take in relation to North Korea. Murata could only predict what would happen in the days ahead. He said that the Obama administration would move to bilateral talks in the near future, and then the six-party talks would resume.

He worries, though, that Tokyo might be further isolated in the framework of the talks, since the issue of abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea between the 1970s and 1980s—still a highly emotional issue in Japan—is far from resolved.

It does not help that of the five other countries in the forum, only Japan maintains a hard-line stance toward North Korea while the other, led by the U.S., decided two years ago that they would have to trust the ‘hermit state’ if they were to resolve the contentious issue of Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.

This apparent turnabout, led by the U.S., proved to be a major letdown to Japan, which has always maintained that if North Korea could not be trusted on the abduction issue—since the latter had repeatedly said that some of the abducted citizens were already dead, a claim Japan refuses to believe—Tokyo would be hard put to trust it on other crucial issues, notably denuclearisation.

Obama specifically spoke of a crucial partnership between Japan and the U.S. on stopping nuclear proliferation. Nagasaki mayor Tamisha Taue praised Obama’s stance on this issue. He said Nagasaki would welcome Obama “from the heart” and expressed hope that the U.S. president’s promise to visit his city alongside Hiroshima “will be realised as early as possible.”

More than 200,000 Japanese died in Nagasaki and Hiroshima toward the final stages of World War II when the U.S. conducted two atomic bombings against Japan.

But such a pronouncement, too, “lacked substance,” said Murata. “We need the substance.”

The perceived omission of crucial details in Obama’s specific stance toward certain crucial issues involving the U.S.’s relations with Japan became more evident when at the joint press conference on Friday, Obama, asked if he favored his country’s bombing of Japan’s two cities, gave no reply.

Still another contentious issue that found no answers during the Obama visit was plans to move the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Japan’s southern island of Okinawa. This, too, was not directly addressed by either head of state, Murata noted.

Thousands of people protested through the streets of Ginowan City in Okinawa last week seeking to pressure the Japanese government to stop plans to allow a new airfield with two runways to be constructed at Henoko, a less crowded part of Okinawa. Under a 2006 agreement between Japan and the U.S. a replacement for the Futenma military airfield will be built off the coast of Nago’s Henoko area in Okinawa.

Hatoyama said last year that if he became prime minister he would work hard to have Futenma—which currently sits right smack in the heart of Ginowan City and home to some 4,000 marines and sailors—relocated outside Japan. The U.S. has ruled that out.

In his remarks during the press conference in Tokyo, the U.S. president said he was open to having more discussions on the fate of the U.S facility. “We have agreed to create an expeditious group to work on our agreement on U.S. forces in Okinawa,” said Obama. Nothing more was said.

Murata said Obama was postponing finding a solution.

From Tokyo, Obama headed to Singapore on Saturday to attend the Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO summit and become the first U.S. president to sit down with all 10 members of the Association of South-east Asian Nations, leaving fundamental questions unanswered in a land that he said held some of the precious memories of his young life.

There is more to Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s pledge last week to extend at least 500 billion yen (5.6 billion U.S. dollars) in fresh assistance to the Mekong region than meets the eye, or so observers think.

Japan’s underlying intentions toward the Asian economies, especially in the Mekong delta regions, have not changed significantly, said Tomohiko Taniguchi, a foreign policy analyst and professor at the prestigious Keio University.

What has changed is that there is now a sense of urgency and crisis among many Japanese bipartisan policy makers that the Mekong sub-region is going to be a “playground” for the Chinese, he said.

The strategy of the new government, which was swept into power in September’s landslide election, is to build the Asian community like the European Union, he added.

“Unless Japan and other like-minded democracies do the job, it will be carried out solely by their giant neighbor, the Peoples Republic of China,” said Taniguchi “But rarely will Japan state its true intention.”

In the last 10 years China has increased its aid and investment in the Mekong region, including mines and rubber plantations in Laos and trade with Myanmar.

A 2008 policy brief released by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, which is headquartered in Canada, noted that China “provides considerable foreign aid to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, often without any major conditions attached and frequently integrated with cultural exchange and support.”

Hatoyama, however, did not touch on any rivalry between Japan and China during the Japan-Mekong Summit in this capital on Nov. 6 to 7, when he made the pledge. On the contrary, he said the two countries were cooperating and engaged in discussions exploring ways to work together to their mutual benefit.

“Ten years ago China was the biggest recipient country of Japanese aid. But after China launched its first astronaut into orbit in 2003, the Japanese government said, ‘You have grown up and you have graduated from the ODA [Official Development Assistance] scheme,'” said Taniguchi.

Japan, however, continues to extend aid to China, targeted mainly at ending environmental degradation and building small schools in rural areas in the communist state. Thus the amount of money involved is small, said Taniguchi.

Japan’s new ODA to the Mekong region, to be disbursed over the next three years, is said to be aimed at strengthening the former’s role as a development partner.

The fresh aid is in addition to Japan’s previous pledges of nearly 400 billion yen (4.5 billion U.S. dollars) in aid for the region since 2007.

ODA refers to the funds and technology that donor nations like Japan extend to developing countries.

“In order to further advance the region, it is a priority for Japan to step up ODA,” Hatoyama told reporters at a news conference Saturday at the Prime Minister’s Official Residence in Tokyo.

Other experts agree that Japan’s promised fresh aid signals its attempts at establishing closer relations with the resource-rich region of at least 220 million total population in an apparent bid to foil China’s growing ties with the Mekong countries.

“Japan seeks to take a more proactive role in the region to offset China’s charm offensive and growing influence,” said Jeffrey Kinston, Japan expert at Temple University Tokyo.

According to Taniguchi ODA infrastructure in Mekong is important because the region constitutes a hinterland for countries like Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, which are important nations and original members of the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN). It also sits right in the middle of the sea lines of communication, a lifeline for the Japanese economy.

The peaceful stability of East Asian economies is one of the most important policy objectives of Japan as well as the United States, he said.

During the summit Japan also vowed to continue to increase its ODA to the region for projects such as highways, water, waste disposal, technology and climate change.

“The major purpose of having this summit is to discuss how best the Mekong countries and Japan can work together to reduce or eliminate the current disparity between the ASEAN countries,” said Kazuo Kodama, spokesperson for Japan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry.

The level of economic development varies across the ASEAN’s 10 member states, from poorly developed countries like Laos to highly developed economies like Singapore, according to Hatoyama.

The summit brought together Hatoyama and his five counterparts from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, all members of the ASEAN. The countries share the Mekong River along with China.

The Mekong region is located along the lower stretches of about 4,800 kilometres of the Mekong River, which begins in the highlands of Tibet and flows through China’s Yunnan province, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The region is collectively poorer than other areas of Southeast Asia.

“It will be very meaningful to keep holding this kind of leaders’ summit every year given changes in the international climate,” Japan’s prime minister told reporters. He added that he planned to have a Japan-Mekong summit in Tokyo every three years and once a year on the sidelines.

To further ties with the Mekong countries, Japan will invite 30,000 youths over the next three years, which will serve to improve the region’s trust in Japan. “All this will be very important,” Hatoyama said.

Aside from Japan and China, the U.S. under President Barack Obama’s watch has also shown keen interest in the region in sharp contrast to the Bush administration, which never showed much interest in the region.

“The fact that the United States and China are trying to increase cooperation with the Mekong region is not bad for Japan at all,” Hatoyama said. “Rather, it is desirable to create a win-win relationship with them by cooperating further.”

He noted the U.S.’s advancement of democracy in the region would be welcome as well.

Burma’s participation in the summit drew significant attention from Japan as well as non-governmental groups. Burmese Prime Minister Thein Sein, who was among the heads of state present at the summit, was the first premier from the military-ruled South-east Asian country to visit Japan since 2003, when his predecessor, Khin Nyunt attended the Japan-ASEAN talks.

In February 2009, a Japan-Mekong exchange year was started in Burma’s former capital of Yangon to show off the cooperation and friendship between Japan and Burma (officially called Myanmar).

According to Kingston, NGOs which favor strict sanctions for Burma worry that Hatoyama’s initiative to establish an East Asian Community will diminish the isolation strategy and may open the door for the Asian Development Bank to resume programmes that would involve Myanmar under the neutral Mekong tent.

The EU-style East Asian Community is an initiative that Hatoyama has espoused since taking office in September. It will include Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand and the 10-member ASEAN regional bloc to help bind regional ties similar to those of the EU.

At a press conference on Saturday, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung expressed appreciation for Hatoyama’s initiative seeking “to contribute to the building of an East Asian Community in the long term based on openness and transparency.”

The leaders promised to work together toward “a decade toward the Green Mekong,” which they plan to start in 2010.They are also committed to bringing about a successful result at the Copenhagen climate change

They also discussed ways of expanding cooperation in areas such as climate change, politics, security, pandemic control, economy, culture and tourism.

By Catherine Makino
TOKYO, Nov 3 2009 (IPS)

Following the bloody clashes in July in Urumqi, the capital of the restive Xingjian region in China, activist Rebiya Kadeer found herself in the midst of another controversy, having been accused by the Chinese government of instigating the riots.

The violent incidents stemmed from an incident in June when a brawl broke out between Uyghur and Han workers at a toy factory in Guangdong province in southern China. The Han are China’s majority ethnic group.

In 1953 the Uyghurs made up 75 percent of Xingjian’s population, but their population has dwindled to 45 percent since the Han Chinese moved into the area. Urumqui is now 70 percent Han, resulting in a lot of resentment among the Uyghurs, especially in the capital city.

Rebiya Kadeer, president of the Washington-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC), denies having been behind the riots that left nearly 200 dead and more than a thousand injured.

The WUC is a federation of exile groups claiming to represent the interests of the Uyghurs inside and outside their homeland in the Xingjian Autonomous Region of northwest China, which is rich in mineral resources and of strategic importance to Beijing.

The 11 million-strong Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim minority in China, which has been subject to systematic oppression by the Chinese government.

Kadeer, 62, was in prison for six years after criticising the Chinese government for its policies in Xingjian, and freed in 2005 after pressure from the Bush Administration. She then moved to the United States and lives in Virginia.

Dubbed “the millionaires,” Kadeer has been ranked China’s 34th richest person with a fortune of 25 million U.S dollars. Until her falling out with Beijing, she was on China’s top political body—National People’s Consultative Conference—representing the people who were not members of the Communist Party.

Her third visit to Japan last week to speak at universities and before non- profit groups coincided with the publication of her biography in Japanese.

Reporter Catherine Makino caught up with her on Friday in Tokyo.

IPS: What have you been able to accomplish for your people?

REBIYA KADEER: I brought optimism and encouragement to my nation.

My people are always worrying about China’s ethnic policy. Many Uyghurs have been killed, and they are anxious about being driven out from their lands.

We need one voice, and my voice is my nation’s voice. I travel around world and ask the international community to protect the Uyghurs. I explain our problems to the world.

IPS: But how can your voice be heard when your people cannot reach you by Internet or by phone?

RK: We can’t contact them by international phone or Internet. In fact, more than 1,500 sites have been closed and their members arrested. They hear my words through Radio Free Asia [which interviewed her in Tokyo]. Some people in Shanghai and Beijing hear my voice and then send it inside Xinjiang.

IPS: What do you hope to achieve in the next few years for your people?

RK: I want the release of 10,000 political prisoners from jail in Xinjiang, and to stop the torture and random killing of the Uyghurs. I want Chinese groups who are roaming the streets killing Uyghurs for no reason to stop. I also want Uyghur women to be returned back to Xingjian.

IPS: What do you mean by the “women to be returned back”?

RK: China moved more than 300,000 girls between the ages of 14 and 25 outside the Xinjiang province to work and assimilate into Chinese society.

Some were sent to factories while beautiful girls are sent to work in hotels and bars. The Chinese government says it’s for economic opportunities, but it’s not true.

The girls are miserable and crying. They don’t have any freedom and have no contact with their families. They are supported [by the government] if they want to marry inside China.

Maybe the riots of July 2009 happened because of this policy.

IPS: Are more Han Chinese coming to Xinjiang?

RK: Yes, every day more and more Chinese migrants are coming to live in Xinjiang. They are the ones who reap the economic benefits.

I believe there are 20 million people comprised of various ethnic groups living in Xingjian and 10 million Han Chinese, although the Chinese government denies it.

The Chinese government must change their ethnic policy. I hope they will come on the table and talk with us. We want self-determination.

IPS: But the Chinese government alleges you have terrorist links—reason perhaps why Taiwan refused to give you a visa?

RK: It wasn’t the Taiwanese people, it was some people in their government with ties to the Chinese government—the Chinese told them I was a terrorist.

I never ever had any links to terrorism. I am against all terrorists groups.

IPS: Why then are they claiming you are a terrorist?

RK: Because people are listening to my voice and I’m telling them the reality about what’s going on in my country. The Chinese government wants to stop my voice. They can influence other countries by telling them I’m a terrorist.

I am a Muslim, so it is easy for them to say I am a terrorist, and maybe some people in other countries will believe it. They also say the Uyghurs are terrorists. More than 10,000 are in jail accused of being terrorists.

IPS: Is that what happened to the author of the short story ‘Wild Pigeon’? He was sentenced in 2005 to ten years in jail for inciting Uyghur separatism.

RK: Yes. Nurmuhemmet Yasin wrote a about a young pigeon—the son of a pigeon king trapped and caged by humans when he ventured far from home. In the end, he committed suicide rather than sacrifice his freedom.

Yasin wrote about freedom, so the Chinese government put him in prison for talking about it. They branded him a terrorist.

IPS: You used your wealth to provide for your fellow Uyghurs’ education, employment and training through various programmes. You ran the 1,000 Families Mothers’ Project that helped women start businesses. Now that you are in exile, what is happening with these programmes?

RK: The Chinese government completely destroyed and stopped my programmes. Our children can’t study and our people can’t get jobs.

I hope [U.S.] President Obama will talk to China about the Uighur’s problems.

IPS: Since you are living in the U.S. now, are you worried about being assassinated? You were surrounded by heavy security in Japan.

RK: Yes, I worry about my security and I don’t feel safe. In fact, when I was in America, I was involved in a car accident.

IPS: Are you saying the Chinese were responsible for the accident?

RK: Maybe. The Chinese are always giving me trouble. I’m not an enemy of the Chinese people or the government. I am only asking for the Chinese government to give the Uyghurs a chance to live our lives in peace.

IPS: How do you feel about having lost your businesses and living in exile?

RK: I am not sad and I don’t regret anything. I am so happy that I opened the international community to the Uyghur voice.

IPS: Having sacrificed a lot for your people, what else are you willing to do for them?

RK: I hope to travel around the world to explain Uyghurs’ problems, so they will begin to support our issues. I hope the whole world support our people’s rights.

Excerpt:

One morning nine months ago, Kenji Hamada’s colleagues were surprised to find him in their Tokyo office slumped over his desk. They thought he was sleeping, but when he did not wake up after two hours, they realised he was dead.

Tokyo's Takao Mikoromo Spiritual Temple, where hundreds paid respects last month to the workers who died from overwork. Credit: Japan's Labor, Health and Welfare Ministry

Hamada had died of a heart attack. The culprit: overwork. He was 42.

In a country known for its overworked workforce, Hamada’s case is far from isolated. In fact, death from overwork, or ‘karoshi, has claimed thousands of lives since this phenomenon came to wide public attention and raised alarm in the ‘60s.

Just last month 800 people, including Hamada’s widow, gathered at Tokyo’s Takao Mikoromo Spiritual Temple, where they paid respects to the thousands of workers who died from stress and excessive work.

“Kenji worked so hard,” said his wife Akiko. “He was so stressed out, working day and night. She described his work environment at the security company where he was employed as “so competitive he never had any relief.” Her husband used to work around 75 hours a week—or an average of 15 hours a day, assuming he only worked five days a week—and spent almost four hours a day commuting to work.

Amid the current global economic downturn that has not spared even the world’s major economies like Japan, workplace stresses are picking up, according to lawyer Hiroshi Kawahito, who represents families and relatives of ‘karoshi’ victims. A weakening demand for exports and major companies cutting jobs has added immense pressure to the workplace, he said.

Because of the current global financial crunch, many companies, including those in Japan, were forced to downsize their workforce. This means that more work has to get done by fewer workers—a situation that has only exacerbated the incidence of ‘karoshi’ in Japan, according to Weston Konishi, adjunct fellow at the Mansfield Foundation in Washington D.C.,

Kawahito fears that ‘karoshi’ has taken on a new face — suicide. “This is something new,” he said. “About 20 years ago, heart attacks or strokes were a symbol of ‘karoshi’ in Japan. In 1994, for instance, Japan’s Economic Planning Agency estimated the number of ‘karoshi’ deaths at around 1,000, or 5 percent of all deaths from cardiovascular diseases, in the 25 to 59 age group.

Today, workers are committing suicide, and that is a major change, he said. Of the more than 30,000 suicides recorded last year, based on data from the national police agency, Kawahito said 10,000 were believed to be related to overwork.

“The stress on workers has been getting stronger and stronger, which has led to more people suffering from mental health illnesses such as depression,” he said. “Some of them end up killing themselves.”

One such case involved a 30-year-old woman working in a sales company. Enduring ill treatment from her boss, who was reportedly constantly yelling at her, she was forced to retire early before she finally committed suicide, recounts the National Defense Counsel for Victims of Karoshi on its website. This non-governmental organisation was established in 1988 by a group of leading ‘karoshi’ lawyers to extend legal help to the families of ‘karoshi’ victims.

In February a Japanese company was ordered to pay around one million U.S. dollars in damages to the family of an employee who committed suicide due to what the court ruled was overwork.

The history of karoshi can be traced back to post-World War II, when the nation resolved to recover quickly, thus emerging as the world’s second largest economy in less than 30 years. Experts said the Japanese worked hard to make it happen so that by the end of the 1960s, they were working 12 or more hours a day, which by then was considered normal.

According to Japan’s Information Resource website, the first case of ‘karoshi’ was reported in 1969 when a 29-year-old married man, who had worked more than 40 days non-stop in the shipping department of Japan’s largest newspaper, died of a stroke.

Last year a survey by RENGO (Japanese Trade Union Confederation), the country’s biggest labor group, showed that 53 percent of workers had been increasingly suffering from stress. While many of the respondents found overwork irritating, others said it caused them mental and physical illnesses.

Nowadays, the Japanese still work long hours, adhere to strict codes, hierarchical structures and do not get much sleep or relaxation, Kawahito told IPS. Many Japanese need to change their lifestyles, he said.

Such change of lifestyle is perhaps steadily being found among the younger workforce, who, according to him, tend to take their work less seriously and therefore appear less prone to ‘karoshi’. They seem to be enjoying life, he said.

“I love drinking, eating good food, being with my friends and girlfriend, movies and computer games,” Hiroo Kawabata, 23, says.

There is yet no study, however, that shows which age groups tend to be more susceptible to ‘karoshi’. But one thing that Kawahito appears certain about is that the social phenomenon that for decades has gripped Japan seems no longer confined to this East Asian nation. He said of late there has been an influx of migrant workers at his office seeking legal help.

The global competition is growing, and some foreign workers work harder than they did 20 years ago, he explained. “And that’s what I am afraid of,” he said

The good news is that Japan’s Labor, Health and Welfare Ministry now recognises that there are work-related ailments due to stress. In 1999 the ministry formulated a standard that determined a company’s liability for work-related health problems among employees, including cardiac and cerebral disorders and mental stress. The mental stress standard was revised in 2009.

Still these are not enough to reverse the incidence of work-related deaths in Japan. “The government only sees part of [the problem],” Kawahito said. “In fact, they have only officially recognised 1,000 work-related suicides when the actual number is around 10,000.”

Complementing government’s efforts are those of the private sector. For instance, there is a ‘karoshi’ hotline, begun in 1988 by lawyers, doctors and other specialists from all over Japan, that gives counseling to those suffering from overwork as well as to those who have lost their loved ones to overwork. Since it was founded, it has received more than 8,000 calls.

Mansfield Foundation’s Konishi said ‘karoshi’ is one of those problems that Japanese society as a whole tends to sweep under the rug, because it touches on some social taboos such as mental stress and a pervasive office culture that makes it nearly impossible for employees to say “no” to their bosses when they are overworked.

While admittedly, ‘karoshi needs to be addressed head on, “social mores in Japan keep the issue from getting the attention that it deserves,” Konishi told IPS. For all its technological savvy as a nation, he said, Japan has not fully harnessed today’s technological advances, particularly in the workplace. “Much work is still done on paper rather than electronically.”

Add to this the fact that psychotherapy is still a relatively nascent practice in Japan. It could help employees who are under enormous amounts of pressure at the office, he said.

For others, perhaps dealing with ‘karoshi’ may not even require some sophisticated solutions, but only the chance to release one’s pent-up workplace angst through creative means.

Recognising this, some ingenious individuals have devised ‘karoshi’ computer games, one of which offers “50 clever ways” of dealing with an otherwise merciless or cruel boss, who, in the workers’ minds, have much to answer for their misery.

Japan’s new female justice minister has promised to get serious about gender equality.

Lawyer Yoko Hayashi: government "must work with 'liberal' men who understand gender equality" Credit: Hayashi/IPS

Minister Keiko Chiba said on Sep. 29, she intends to propose legislation as early as next year to allow women and men to choose to register different surnames at marriage.

There have been 20 attempts to approve such legislation. “I feel the failure to pass the legislation, even after the Legislative Council submitted its recommendations, is not normal,” Chiba said.

In August, the United Nations told Japan to move on gender equality or risk international criticism for its lack of action.

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women called for “immediate action” to fix a variety of problems ranging from wage gaps, legal inequalities, rape, pornography and poor representation of women in high-level positions.

The U.N. committee monitors state compliance with CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women which was adopted in 1979 by the General Assembly. Its findings are not legally binding, but the 23-member panel says Japan has a moral obligation to follow its recommendations.

The panel in a lengthy report on Aug.18 urged the government to take tough measures to ensure gender equality. It described the efforts so far as “insufficient,” and set a two-year deadline for Japan to take action.

Yoko Hayashi, a Japanese lawyer and committee member, blames Japan’s lack of seriousness on its conservative politics, absence of women leaders, and the economic recession.

“I have to admit that there has been a lack of leadership and strategy among the women’s movement,” she said. “Also, Japan has not shared its wealth or economic growth with women. In other words, there is unbalance between Japan’s economic presence and women’s participation in society. Japan requires more intensive efforts to accomplish gender equality.”

In Japan, women still earn only 60 to 70 percent of men’s wages. Only women face a six-month waiting period before they can remarry, and laws discriminate against children born out of wedlock.

Furthermore, the committee recommended that Japan raise the legal age of marriage for women from 16 to 18, the same as men, and allow married couples to choose separate surnames.

The panel was also concerned that the penalty for rape in Japan remains low and that incest and marital rape are not defined explicitly as crimes under the penal code. While the punishment for robbery is a prison term less than five years, for rape it’s less than three years.

A total of 187 countries including Japan have signed CEDAW. The United States, Somalia, Sudan, Iran and Nauru have yet to sign.

“I hope the U.S. will join CEDAW as soon as possible,” Hayashi says. “If Japan and the U.S. adopt a more pro-human rights policy both in the domestic sphere and the foreign policy, it will bring a profound change in world politics,” Hayashi says.

If Japan ratifies the optional protocol to CEDAW (2000), which gives the Committee the authority to consider even individual complaints, Japanese women can argue against gender-based discrimination, such as wage gaps under the universal standard, she adds.

Says Lakshmi Anantnarayan, the communications director for Equality Now, an international human rights organisation, there has been much progress in developing standards and systems to address violence against women in a comprehensive manner in the last two decades. “However, Japan seriously lags behind.”

She notes there is only one rape crisis centre, which cannot meet the complex and multiple needs of rape victims adequately. Neither are the police, health care system, prosecutors and courts trained in handling rape cases.

“In most countries (the age for) consensual sex is 16 years, anything under that is considered statutory rape, yet in Japan it is 13,” Anantnarayan points out.

To help curb rape and violence against women, the committee called on the Japanese government to “ban the sale of video games or cartoons involving rape and sexual violence against women which normalise and promote violence against women and girls.”

Pornographic video games and cartoons are thriving businesses in Japan. Rape games such as ‘RapeLay’ encourage the player to stalk, grope, kidnap and then rape a woman and her two daughters, one of whom appears to be about 12 years old.

Amber Raz, Equality Now’s Asia Programme officer, says these games involving sexual violence often promote stereotypes that women and girls enjoy being raped or ultimately fall in love with their rapist, as was the case with another comic series called ‘Rape Man’.

While Japan is slow in changing, many women’s groups hope the new coalition government will bring about a more progressive gender equality policy soon. The world’s second largest economy is ranked 91 in the global Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum.

To make progress, says CEDAW member Hayashi, the government must “find and support women who work for women” and “work with ‘liberal’ men who understand gender equality.”

By Catherine Makino and Naoyuki Ogi
TOKYO, Oct 2 2009 (IPS)

Hip hop. Fashion. Zen café. Animation.

Who could have thought that these pop culture staples would come to be associated with a religion known for its centuries-old traditions advocating a strict life of self-denial?

Yet Buddhist priests in Japan are riding on life’s fleeting pleasures to bring believers back and even attract young people into the fold.

Today, this religion is fading away, said Buddhist priests who spoke with IPS, and many of the country’s approximately 75,000 temples are facing the biggest crisis in their history, because hardly anyone ever goes to them these days.

Buddhism came to Japan in the sixth century through contact with Korea and China. It has co-existed and even complemented the East-Asian nation’s native religion, Shinto. It is customary for Japanese families to carry out funerals the Buddhist way and to keep a small house altar so they can pay respects to their ancestors, which is foundational to Buddhist teachings.

But that is probably all that can be said today of the faithful’s adherence to things spiritual – or Buddhist.

Concerned that Buddhism is no longer part of everyday life, the Hongwanji Temple in Kyoto sought to reach out to the younger set by coming out with a DVD depicting the life of its founder, Shinran, of Shin Buddhism, considered the most popular form of Buddhism in Japan. The 108-minute anime, which cost about 3,600 yen (40 U.S. dollars) apiece, came with collectible miniature characters, key rings, pens and notes.

The results were mixed.

“A few people who saw it were very upset because they thought the DVD insulted Shinran’s sacredness,” said KeishinTagi, a 27-year-old priest at Jodo Shinshu Temple. When he showed it to 15 kids at Sunday school, it proved “too long for them and they fell asleep,” he said. “When I showed it to the adults, they said it was boring.”

Other temples use different strategies. Some employ English-speaking priests who give inspirational speeches on Buddhism to attract tourists. Still others stage fashion shows, called the ‘Bozu Collections’, where nuns and monks dressed in ornate robes hit the runways in temples while chanting to the hip hop beat.

Hip hop is a type of music consisting of rhythmic vocal style called ‘rap’, which is accompanied by backing beats. It started in the Bronx in New York City. There are also the Zen cafés that are being promoted as places where one can experience spirituality while eating a vegan lunch. One café said, “Meditation and the hand-copying of ‘sutras’ [canonical scriptures] can actually be tried out under the guidance of monks” standing in front of the café. There’s also “live Buddhist music performances held twice a month.”

Besides hoping to attract people to the faith, priests are also trying to break the perception that Buddhism is only for the dead, referred to as ‘Funeral Buddhism’.

More than three-quarters of Japan’s 127-million population, who are Buddhists, do not visit temples except for funerals or memorials, sources said. Temples are financially dependent on these services. In fact, they said, there are more funerals today because of the aging population and declining birth rate, which means there are fewer young people who help pay the temple bills that keep them afloat.

But what rankles many priests is not so much their temples’ dwindling coffers as the use of unconventional means to lure potential faithful and win back others among some Buddhist clergy, which they say are insulting to the religion’s hallowed traditions.

Masayuki Masuda, a 32-year-old priest, thinks otherwise. “The events and activities like anime [a contraction of ‘Japanese animation’], fashion shows and hip hop are temporary means to attract people,” he said.

“The true purpose of these events is to make many people encounter the teachings of Buddha. So we have to lead these people who go to these events to a realisation of Buddhism,” he said. “Unfortunately, there is nothing to bridge these new activities with Buddhism.”

Such efforts, he said, must be imbued with a deep and abiding belief in Buddhism before they can be expected to attract others, said Masuda, who worries that this could be the missing link. Buddhist priests must be able to convey such intensity of belief before they even put up these events, Masuda notes.

Masanori Yamamura, 51, blames the fading of Buddhism on priests.

“They are lacking the cultivation of their own hearts based on Buddhism,” said the priest. “They are not living out Buddha’s teaching, so they themselves cannot find the meaning of the Buddhist way of life. For them, Buddhism is only a job to conduct funerals and Buddhist services. These priests are responsible for the decline of Buddhism.”

According to Yamamura, if these priests truly believe in Buddhism, these activities will be “born out of the process of their reflection and confidence in the Buddhist way of life.” If that happens, “then these activities shouldn’t be a problem,” because everything “depends on the Buddhist priest.”

But that is even assuming that there are enough priests to propagate the Buddhist way of life. According to the ‘Yomiuri Weekly’, a major newspaper, the number of Buddhist priests has plunged from 1.6 million in 1975 to 300,000 in 2005, based on data from the Cultural Affairs agency.

Yamamura concedes it is not just the priests who must take the blame for the apparent decline in Buddhist following in Japan. He said there is also the country’s changing culture to consider.

“Buddhism is on the decline because multi-generations of families no longer live together,” he told IPS. “Generations of families used to live in the same house – (with) grandmas and grandpas. These elderly people followed the Buddhist customs, like visiting the temples during ‘Obon’.”

‘Obon’ is a Buddhist event where people go back to their hometowns to be reunited with their families in August and pray for the souls of their ancestors.

“But today young couples and families are living by themselves and cutting off these traditions. There are also fewer people coming to Buddhist events. They would rather go to rock concerts, food and international festivals or travel abroad during ‘Obon’,” said Yamamura.

“Traditions are gradually deteriorating, but what can we do?” he asked.

At present, the religion that has had a profound influence on its intellectual, artistic, social and political life is nothing but an empty ritual for many, observed only in a ceremonial way as at funerals, said Jeffrey Kingston, a professor at Temple University in Japan.

“The contrast to South-east Asia is extraordinary, not because of differences in Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism [other forms of Buddhist belief widely practiced in certain parts of Asia such as Sri Lanka and Thailand], but also in terms of how religion is interwoven with everyday life. That is not the case at all in Japan,” he said.

He added that like many traditions and customs, he agrees that Buddhism is fading in Japan, “and I doubt that promoting it through anime, hip hop or the like will reverse the trend.”

“I suspect at some level, the priests themselves are partly responsible for this state of affairs, as many don’t lead exemplary lives and seem way too caught up in materialistic concerns,’ he added.

Out there are people looking for meaning in life, and many would be open to the messages of Buddhism if they could connect to its basic precept, he said. “But the world of anime, Internet, work … leaves many overwhelmed and spiritually desiccated,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Catherine Makino
TOKYO, Sep 21 2009 (IPS)

Sultana Kamal dreams of a country “where every single citizen will live in democracy, in equality” and where everyone has “equal share to resources and opportunities.” Fulfilling this dream has been her lifelong advocacy as a human rights advocate.

The former adviser to the caretaker government of Bangladesh has served as a United Nations legal consultant for Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong. As a legal practitioner, she is committed to providing legal services to the poor and underprivileged.

Kamal joined the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, which pitted the West Pakistan (now Pakistan) against East Pakistan, resulting in the latter’s secession as an independent state, now called Bangladesh. Among others, she helped collect information for the guerilla forces, Mukti Bahini (Liberation Army), and gave shelter to people displaced by the conflict.

Kamal completed her law degree at Dhaka University in 1978, and later a master’s degree in Women and Development Studies in the Netherlands.

She has played a key role in bringing to international attention the long drawn-out conflict involving the indigenous people living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in the south-eastern region of Bangladesh. Even after a peace accord was signed in 1997, violations of human rights in the region persisted and peace remains elusive.

Some critics warned that Bangladesh could become the next Sri Lanka, which only recently emerged from a decades-long civil war.

Kamal, who was in Japan in mid-September, shared with IPS her aspirations for her country and what she hoped a developed country like Japan could do.

IPS: What did you hope to achieve for your people by coming to Japan?

SULTANA KAMAL: (My) main objective was to share information regarding the implementation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Accord, which was signed in 1997 between the government of Bangladesh and Shanti Bahin (the United People’s Party of the CHT).

The Accord was to end the armed conflict, which has been going on since 1976 in the region, and to settle questions regarding the rights of the indigenous people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. These included land rights, natural and environmental practices, rights to their culture and, most importantly, the constitutional recognition of their rights and identity.

I wanted to see greater awareness of the problems of indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, their struggles and demands, which should lead to more support for them by the Japanese.

IPS: Why Japan in particular?

SK: Some Japanese groups are concerned with the rights of the disempowered and disadvantaged, especially indigenous people, who have been engaged in working towards the realization of (those) rights.

IPS: Is your government sincere in its support for the CHT?

SK: The present government of Bangladesh is committed to implementing the Accord, but it is facing challenges from the anti-Accord forces. There is a need to strengthen the people and government’s support of the CHT.

This trip to Japan will help us reach the international community and get stronger opinions favorable to the Accord.

IPS: What do you expect from the new government of Japan?

SK: This government is liberal, so we can expect the benefits of a liberal and progressive outlook on (its) international policies. More importantly, we hear that the government will put more emphasis on strengthening relationships with its Asian neighbors, which means more support to the people of Asia who need it most.

IPS: What do you envision Japan will do now that it is under new leadership?

SK: New leadership means new hopes…. not (only) for its own people, but for the (rest of the) world, because Japan is among the league of world leaders.

This time the hope is even greater for Asia as the (Japanese) government is likely to be more forward-looking and has already committed itself to closer ties with (its) Asian neighbors.

IPS: Please tell us about your organization, the Law and Mediation Center or Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK)?

SK: (ASK) started in 1986 as a legal aid centre to provide free legal aid to the disempowered. Since most of the disempowered happen to be women, it had a special focus on them, especially poor women.

It provides legal aid to victims of state or social violence, arbitrary arrest, preventive detention, and community and class violence.

It started in a garage of a well-wisher of the organisation and has since grown into a 17-unit composite programme known as a human rights and legal aid center, or Ain o Salish Kendra.

ASK cooperates with many national, international and regional networks on human rights issues. With the UNECOSOC (United Nations Economic and Social Council) (consultative) status, ASK works closely with the U.N. special rapporteurs and on some government committees as civil society members to give advice. In short, ASK is considered to be one of the most active human rights groups (in the world).

IPS: What is the situation of women in your country?

SK: I am very proud to say that the women have made a lot of progress. But because of the existing patriarchal systems… in both private and public life, women have to face a lot of challenges in realising their rights.

The Constitution of Bangladesh commits to equality in public life for women. It goes further to say that special measures will be taken to bring the disadvantaged groups, including women, at par with everyone, and everyone will be equal before the law.

IPS: Is that happening in reality?

SK: Since in private life, laws based on religions govern people, women are discriminated against in marriage, divorce, guardianship and custody of children and in inheritance.

The discrimination is not only between women and men of the same religion; it is between women of different religions, too. For example, the Muslim women have limited rights to divorce and inheritance, which the women of other religions don’t have.

The situation of minority women is even worse, particularly in a conflict situation where their interests and rights are considered secondary to the larger interests of the community which, as we all know, are defined by (traditional) patriarchy.

IPS: What is being done about it?

SK: The women’s movement is very vibrant in Bangladesh. The present government also has promised to declare policies for women’s development. We can hope for the best, but we know very well that there is no respite from hard work for us to gain what we aspire for.

IPS: What urgently needs to be done in your country?

SK: The most important duty we have now is supporting the democratic processes and be firm on not allowing any anti-democratic, anti-human rights, fundamentalist or corrupt measures, to foil it. Seeing that democracy gets a ground in this country is a job of the people as well as the government. Establishment of justice, rule of law, human rights and security and peace are the priorities now.

IPS: You have given so much energy and time for causes. How has this affected you personally, and have you had to sacrifice a lot?

SK: If I have been able to give my energy and time to causes in my life, I will consider that to be my good fortune. What better use could I put my energy and time to?

The main impact it has had on me personally is that it has taught me to understand and love my country better and to feel a part of the whole of humanity. I don’t feel that I have sacrificed a lot. I think I have done nothing more than my duty.

Excerpt:

By Catherine Makino
TOKYO, Sep 8 2009 (IPS)

A tiny kingdom located at the eastern end of the Himalayas and bordered by China and India used to be one of the most isolated countries in the world until it became a full-fledged democracy in 2008.

Bhutan’s shift to democracy began when King Jigme Singye Wangchuck abdicated the throne to his son in December 2006, signaling the end of absolute monarchy in this country.

Today, Bhutan prides itself not only on its democratic freedom, evidenced by its first national elections in 2008, but also on its unique concept of development that has become the foundation of the country’s path to progress — Gross National Happiness (GNH).

GNH was coined by King Wangchuck in 1972, when he opened up Bhutan to modernization. It is an earnest attempt to meld material and spiritual well-being and, in Thinley’s view, lies in stark contrast to conventional development models such as gross domestic product or GDP.

In Tokyo recently, Prime Minister Jigme Y. Thinley, whose party won 45 of the 47 lower house seats in Bhutan’s legislature during last year’s elections, spoke with IPS about GNH and other issues facing his country.

IPS: You were in Japan recently, where you gave a speech about gross national happiness (GNH). What is it in a nutshell?

JIGME Y. THINLEY: GNH is the development paradigm for Bhutan. It is different from the conventional development models which are gross domestic products creating and fueling consumerism. (GDP) is not sustainable.

In order to keep our traditional culture we need GNH, or else our heritage and customs will be threatened. We knew we had to change, so we set up a different approach that would not sacrifice the well-being of our people. We don’t want to give up happiness for material development.

IPS: On what is GNH based?

JYT: Its aim is to create conditions for the pursuit of happiness by citizens. It can be achieved through material needs of the body and the emotional, physiological and intellectual needs of the mind.

IPS: How have you been explaining it to Japan and other countries?

JYT: That Bhutan is offering them a new alternative development model. It is a paradigm shift that leaders must consider and explore. We offer them an idea on which they can build. Japan knows it needs to rethink its growth model and it can play a leadership role here.

IPS: What was Japan’s response?

JYT: Yukio Hatoyama, (opposition) DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan) leader and future prime minister, said in his manifesto that too much American or Anglo-Saxon capitalism has influenced Japan.

I also met many members of both major parties, including (outgoing) Prime Minister (Taro) Aso, and there wasn’t much difference between them. They both say Japanese prosperity and happiness cannot be sustainable if they stay on the same path

IPS: How does your model differ from that of GDP?

JYT: GDP is a measure of goods and services produced at a given period of time but does not in any way measure the environmental or the social costs (of development), leaves out the human aspect and focuses entirely on economic growth.

IPS: But don’t we need economic growth?

JYT: Economic growth is necessary to eliminate poverty. That said, we do not have a shortage of food in the world, but people are going hungry and there is poverty in one part of the world. We know there is so much wastage and excessive consumption in another part of it. We also have medicine, but people are dying for lack of access to it.

IPS: How can we get it distributed?

JYT: Fiscal policies to tax the rich would ensure equal distribution. I think the rich will be willing pay taxes to help others.

While I also think most countries have good taxation systems, there are many kinds of (tax-)evasive methods, so we need to put measures in place to stop it.

In the end we know as rich as a society may become, it will never have enough to sustain a welfare system, which is based on state intervention and handouts.

IPS: Can we achieve it when there are dysfunctional families, especially given the current financial crisis?

JYT: You either discard it or fix it. You can’t discard yourself or the human race because we are part of it, and so we need to fix it.

IPS: How do you fix it?

JYT: We need to reprioritize and redefine what matters most to people. What is it that human beings pursue in life? We all pursue wealth and prosperity and now we need to define that in a way that is more meaningful. It is more than material wealth, which is a fleeting pleasure, and comes at the cost of family and relationships.

There is only so much a government can do and much more an individual must do to find happiness.

The Bhutanese government does not in any way pretend to say it is a purveyor of happiness. ‘There it is — a little bit of happiness for you.’ We will make sure that your basic physical needs are met and intellectual development opportunities are given. Whether you are happy in the end is up to you and what you want to achieve in your life.

IPS: How do you convey this message?

JYT: We tell them family is important and whether you are happy or unhappy depends on whether you are surrounded by people who will laugh with you or cry with you in times of success or sorrow. Having people around to comfort you means you won’t find yourself jumping off the Brooklyn or the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridges.

IPS: How does Bhutan manage to navigate the neighbourhood? Your survival and success is at stake as you are sandwiched between two huge powers — China and India.

JYT: We have good relations with these countries…. We will meet them (officials of the two states) at the end of this year to negotiate our border disputes.

IPS: Please tell us about the reported discrimination of minorities in your country.

JYT: It’s a myth. Every Bhutanese has citizenship. We are an inclusive government and ethnic minorities have equality and justice. It has been done. Twenty-eight percent are of Nepalese extraction and many are elected to Bhutan’s National Assembly. Our cabinet of 10 ministers includes two (from a minority group).

IPS: Some critics are saying the Bhutanese are having a hard time adapting to the rapid changes in your country and there are now murders and suicides.

JYT: We only have about one, two or three suicides and a murder a year. But it was never reported before. Now we have a very active media for 650,000 people. It occupies the front pages…. It is newsworthy and is an important part of the media. I think it is good.

IPS: What is the situation of women in Bhutan?

JYT: There is gender equality. Women in Bhutan have few reasons to complain, both socially and politically. Because of our (mountainous) terrain, they suffer and have fallen behind. For example, there are only 14 women in parliament, but it will change to 30 percent (in the next election). I went down on my hands and knees to get them to run for office (last year).

The women outnumbered the men voters. When the European observers came, they were amazed by the number of active women in our gatherings.

IPS: What is your message to our readers?

JYT: The economic recession and the threats we face from climate change are problems that have been created by the way we live, consumerist-orientated, market-based GDP, (and) macroeconomic paradigm that we have been following. These stimulation packages will only lead to short-term solutions. We need long-term solutions.

Excerpt:

By Catherine Makino
TOKYO, Aug 12 2009 (IPS)

Ann Wright is a former U.S. diplomat who served in the military for 29 years.

Ann Wright: "People seldom hear a former U.S. government official criticise U.S. policies" Credit: www.voicesofconscience.com

She was a deputy ambassador in Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Mongolia and Micronesia. She is one of three U.S. diplomats who publicly resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war.

She is currently in Japan speaking around the country about eradicating military violence against civilians, including sexual assault and rape by the military. Before she arrived in Japan she went to the Pacific island of Guam with a delegation.

Wright spoke to IPS on U.S. plans to build a military base in Guam, sexual assault by U.S. soldiers on Japanese women and girls and how groups in Japan work with their counterparts in the U.S. to stop this violence.

IPS: A U.S. military base in Guam could result in the redeployment of more than 35,000 people there. What did you say in Guam? ANN WRIGHT: That our delegation is here in solidarity with the people of Guam in terms of the movement of 8,000 U.S. marines from Okinawa to Guam.

That the people of Japan, particularly the people on Okinawa, have been working very hard to remove some of the extensive military forces. Now, the U.S. military seem to be coming to this lovely island.

The Okinawans certainly understand that whenever the U.S. military lands somewhere, it leaves a very large footprint. They all know it very well, because much of their land is already occupied by the U.S. military.

In Guam they have been seeing their own lands being taken from them.

IPS: What has the response been to you in Japan? AW: The responses have been very heart-warming at the Mothers’ Congress in Kyoto, Jul. 25-26 (9,000 attended the plenary and 550 attended the 4 hour workshop on international issues), the Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Hiroshima, Aug 6 (3,000 attended the plenary, and 300 the 2-day conference), and 10 groups of the Japanese New Women’s Association in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Hiroshima, Kushiro and Sapporo.

The audiences are very interested in these topics and ask a lot of questions. They seldom hear a former U.S. government official criticise U.S. policies.

IPS: Some critics say Japan is losing its importance to the U.S. AW: I believe Japan is very important to the United States. I think the U.S. considers Japan a friend and ally while seeing China as an economic and military competitor.

IPS: What message would you like to give about the situation in Japan for women? AW: Women living near U.S. military bases in Japan should be very cautious as rape, sexual assault and domestic violence is very high.

I would also encourage Japanese women to claim their rights and challenge the government and society to make every Japanese citizen equal.

IPS: What about the issue of U.S. military violence against Japanese women and girls, including sexual assault and rape? AW: Yes, every incident of sexual assault and rape is one too many – these are crimes that must be prosecuted and seldom are. The U.S. military says the statistics on rape by U.S. military is no greater than rape in the civilian sectors, but that is not the point. The military prides itself on order and discipline and must be able to instill in their members a fear of committing this criminal act – punishment has to be a top priority and it is not in the U.S. military.

IPS: You also travel with CODE PINK. Who are they? AW: They are Women for Peace. It is a peace group formed in 2002 against the war in Iraq. It is a vibrant, colourful, fast-moving group that challenges U.S. Presidents and Congress on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza.

IPS: How are groups in Japan working with U.S. groups to stop violence against women? AW: Groups in Japan participate in international conferences on ending the harmful effects of U.S. bases abroad, including violence against women. Japanese groups have talked with Congress members and with congressional committees as well as with staff of the State Department.

IPS: Is it true that a class action suit against the U.S. military is to be filed? AW: Burke O’Neill, a private law firm in Washington, DC is gathering evidence of sexual assault and rape primarily of women in the military to determine whether they will file a class action law suit on military sexual trauma (MST).

The proposal currently does not cover rape of civilians, but we have raised the issue with them and they are considering it, but the main focus, at this point, is on rape of military women.

Excerpt:

By Catherine Makino
TOKYO, Jun 26 2009 (IPS)

Environment Minister Tetsuo Saito talked to IPS about Japan giving technical and financial support to developing countries and its goal of cutting its greenhouse emissions by 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. Japan is the world’s fifth- largest greenhouse gas emitter.

The government is also busy preparing for a major U.N. climate change conference that will take place in Copenhagen in December to craft a framework to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

IPS Correspondent Catherine Makino spoke to Japanese Minister of Environment Tetsuo Saito in Tokyo.

IPS: Critics say it is important for Japan to make itself an environmental power, especially in Copenhagen this December, where governments will come up with a climate agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. Tetsuo Saito: Japanese leadership is important, but so is the participation of all major emitters of green house gas emissions, which needs to be reduced globally in order to overcome the challenge of global warming. Under the Kyoto Protocol, reduction commitments were made by countries emitting only about 30 percent of the world’s total emissions.

IPS: How important is it for developed countries to reach an agreement on cutting emission in Copenhagen? TS: As we approach Copenhagen, it’s extremely critical to engage America, China and India. To achieve this objective, Japan needs to show leadership for the world, so these countries participate in a new agreement. There isn’t any alternative other than the framework involving those major emitters. That is the only way to save the world and Japan aims to take a leadership role to that end.

IPS: Japan’s decision to cut emissions by 15 percent were criticised by Japanese and international nongovernmental organisation groups for being “dangerously unambitious.” In fact, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends that developed countries reduce gas emission by 25 to 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, or by more than 30 percent from 2005 levels. TS: I believe Japan’s decision on midterm greenhouse gas reduction targets does not by any means run counter to the scientific requirements set forth by the IPCC. It is duly within the considerations they presented.

IPS: Why did Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso use 2005 as a base year when the European Union agreed to cut emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels? TS: Because the Japanese government decided to coordinate with the United States, which has set its base year as 2005. It’s absolutely critical for the U.S. to join, and we had a coordinated approach with the U.S. in setting our midterm targets.

IPS: What is Japan’s long-term goal? TS: Japan has decided to make a 60 to 80 percent reduction of green house emissions by 2050 as our long-term target. The mid-term target must serve as a milepost on the way to achieve this long-term target.

IPS: How will Japan accomplish that? TS: We will raise the ration of renewable energies to 20 percent, the highest level in the world. Solar power will be increased to 20 times current levels and every other new car will be an eco-car, such as the hybrid car.

IPS: Are you in talks with the Petroleum Association of Japan to directly blend gasoline with 10 percent ethanol by 2020? TS: Yes, we are tying to persuade them to adopt direct blending of ethanol into gasoline. We believe that it is critically important to deliver a biofuel supply without affecting the food supply.

IPS: What technical and financial support is Japan providing to help developing nations cut their green house emissions? TS: In assisting developing countries’ efforts to reduce emission of green house emissions, Japan established the “Cool Earth Partnership,” on the scale of 10 billion dollars. Through this, Japan will cooperate actively with developing countries in making efforts to reduce emissions. We will extend the hand of assistance to developing countries suffering climate change impacts. We will give aid and implement other actions for global warming and local environmental problems, such as air and water pollution. The idea is to build social economic infrastructure.

IPS: How many countries are participating in “Cool Earth Partners?” TS: Eighty-eight countries and projects have been launched in 44 countries. In the case of Indonesia, we extended 308 million dollars as a Cool Earth Official Development Assistance (ODA) loan.

IPS: You mentioned the Japanese people should look at the possible benefits which can be brought about by the financial crisis. TS: We now see a chance to transform our economy by the idea of a “Green New Deal” advocated by U.S. President Barrack Obama. We need to create a system to spur economic growth by focusing on the area of environment.

IPS: What will the cost of global warming be to the world? TS: We should consider not only the cost of actions against global warming, but also the cost of inaction. For example, damage due to floods will amount to 8.7 trillion yen by the end of this century, if we don’t take measure against Global warming. But this is the cost of preserving our earth. I firmly believe that Japan must tackle the global warming issue.

Excerpt:

By Catherine Makino
TOKYO, Mar 19 2009 (IPS)

Muhammad Yunus, who claimed the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize founding Grameen Bank, which has lent out more than six billion dollars to mostly poor women, says the global recession presents a historical opportunity for change.

Grameen Bank's Muhammad Yunus, in Tokyo, this week. Credit: Catherine Makino/IPS

IPS Correspondent Catherine Makino caught up with Yunus, considered the guru of microfinance, while he was on a visit to Japan this week.

IPS: How are the poorer countries going to cope with the long economic recession? Muhammad Yunus: They don’t have any control over the situation because they are the victims. We need to urge the world to fix the mess by using G-20, the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But there isn’t any easy solution.

IPS: Do you think the crisis will get worse? MY: Maybe it will go deeper and continue to get worse. The first point I would like to bring out is that although this crisis has taken over all the pages of newspapers and all the hours of television, this is not the only crisis in town. There are other crises and we should not forget that.

IPS: What are the other crises and when did they begin? MY: In 2008 the financial crisis began, but before it began there was another crisis which was making headlines all over and creating terror in many people’s minds — food crisis. The food crisis didn’t disappear, it was simply overshadowed and it could get worse. And 2008 was the year when the oil crisis shot through the roof and that crisis hasn’t disappeared either. They’re just keeping their heads down, and at the next opportune moment it can come back again. There’s also global warming and it’s getting worse.

IPS: Why do you think these crises came together now? MY: This big package all happened in one particular time, 2008. The reason I’m reminding you is because it is not in the papers. I think all these crises have the same fundamentals, and are not a separate expression of different parts of society or different parts of the economy. They all emerged from the same basic default that we have inside the structures we have built and we have to address those before we can fix anything up.

IPS: Do you see that as an opportunity to fix a system that does not work for everyone? MY: This is the greatest opportunity because the crisis opened up opportunities. If things go right, even if it is a little bit shaky, nobody wants to touch it because it’s working. Now, if it’s not working, everybody’s upset, everybody’s worried, so this is a good time to address those things. It is a good time to touch things we thought were sacred. We have to sink into this opportunity, pull all our energies and minds together on how to make this opportunity useful and use it right now. We don’t want to miss this great opportunity in human history.

IPS: What’s your opinion on how this crisis started? MY: This crisis was not created by us. It was created by a very small number of people in one country (the United States). If a small number of people can create such a disastrous situation for all the people of the world, then something needs to be seen here, a lesson to be learned. They rocked the whole foundation of our system and created misery for so many people. Today’s capitalism is half-baked.

IPS: How about the wealthy people who were affected by the economic crisis? MY: Those who will be losing billions of dollars are worried about it, but when it comes down to it, they will still be left with billions of dollars, and similarity those who have millions will be left with millions of dollars. Their lifestyle will not change. The real victims are the three billion people at the bottom of the population who didn’t contribute whatsoever to this crisis. They will be losing their jobs, incomes and food and it will get worse. They became the victims of the banking system, which we need to change.

IPS: Will the bailout packages help? MY: We talk about the bailout packages which will get the economic machine moving, but no one is talking about the bottom half of the population. Can’t they put at least 10 percent bailout packages for the people who have been victimised by all this? This is the issue we cannot forget, and I insist we do not go back to the same old ‘normal’ situation that we are coming from. It has to be a new normal situation which will create a new direction. It will be a bailout for the people who have been victimised by this institution.

IPS: How has Grameen Bank’s programme of microcredit been affected by the crisis? MY: We haven’t been touched by the financial crisis. Big banks have floundered, but we haven’t. Today we have eight million borrowers who take out 100 million US dollars each month, paying back 99 percent of the time. Our model can go all over the world, including developed countries. In New York City, Grameen America lends about 2,200 dollars to women.

We’re also talking to China and India. There are a lot of migrant workers in China who are losing their jobs. Beijing is very interested social business and India wants to get started.

IPS: How would you change the financial system? MY: I suggest the economic system be totally redesigned. It worked for big business and rich people, but it didn’t work for two-thirds of the world because they were excluded from it. Nobody will get through the cracks in the new system. The financial system should be rooted to the ground, not making a fantasy economy built with castles in the sky which was the root cause of these problems.

Today’s business is profit making and we are human beings, not robbers. Presently business is based on selfishness, which caused the crisis, but we are also selfless human beings.

The new system should be inclusive of two-thirds of the world. For example, most people in the U.S. cannot even get a bank loan; they have to go through payday to get loans. Payday loans charge 100 to 500 percent interest rates. This is the failure of the banking system. Everybody should be entitled to a loan. Grameen even loans to beggars, who will buy fruit or candy and sell it.

IPS: Your company is involved in social business. MY: The common principle of social business is a company created to help a social problem. Grameen Danone has used social business to address malnutrition in Bangladesh. We produce yogurt with all the micronutrients mixed in and sell it to malnourished children, so they become healthy. This company is trying to solve the malnutrition of children by business, not charity.

IPS: What other joint ventures and multinationals are you working with? MY: We have now developed social business along with multinationals to appeal to communities to convince people we are human beings and not robbers. We have Bangladesh Intel (which is NASDAQ, Internet technology for rural towns), Verolia Water (creates clean water in Bangladesh) INTC, Groups Dabibe (yogurt to help fight malnutrition for children) and we are talking to Volkswagen, Adidas and Alliance on new projects.

*Not for publication in Italy

Excerpt:

By Catherine Makino
TOKYO, Feb 3 2009 (IPS)

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, one of the world’s leading human rights activists, is often heard on the subject of hate. He is an international authority on issues related to digital hate over the Internet.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper Credit: Catherine Makino/IPS

As associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a leading Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights organisation that he helped found in 1977, the Rabbi oversees the ‘Task Force Against Hate’.

IPS correspondent Catherine Makino spoke with Rabbi Cooper while he was in Japan this week to have meetings on North Korean human rights and assist relatives of citizens kidnapped from Japan by North Korean agents during the cold war years.

IPS: What is your mission in Japan? Rabbi Cooper: My main purpose is to confer with government officials, political figures and NGOs to discuss ways to further the cause of North Korean human rights and assist relatives of the abductees.

IPS: What is the North Korea Freedom coalition and what are its goals? RC: The coalition is a reflection of the deep concern many Americans have for the long sufferings of the North Korean people and related human rights issues.

IPS: You mentioned you would like to set up a symbolic tribunal regarding North Korea. What was the response to it and what would be its purpose? RC: The concept of a tribunal on North Korean Human Rights was inspired by a similar international gathering in 1981 in Stockholm, Sweden, to draw attention to the achievements and tragedy of holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg.

Eyewitness to Wallenberg’s heroism and testimony from people who saw him in Soviet Gulag were presented before major human rights figures who flew in from around the world. The resulting media coverage helped raise international awareness about this great man that otherwise would have been impossible.

The idea of convening such a gathering on North Korea would help get international attention to the basket of human rights issues and hopefully spur a more unified approach to pressuring North Korea to be responsive on these humanitarian concerns. Of course the Japanese abductees issue would play a prominent role, with an opportunity to educate world public opinion on their tragic suffering.

Such a tribunal could only happen with the support of people, foundations and government of Japan. We will be speaking with a wide spectrum of NGOs and experts to see if such an undertaking will actually take place later in 2009.

IPS: The abductees issue in Japan has become political as well as controversial and is supported by right wing groups. There are more people in South Korea who were abducted by North Korea, but instead you chose Japanese abductees. RC: As far as we are concerned we do not see the suffering of the abductees or their families as political footballs but as humanitarian issues that demand the civilised world’s attention and support. Any gathering would give equal voice to all who fit the tragic category whatever their nationality.

However, Japan is one of the nations involved in the six-party discussions and I believe could be doing more in helping address the overall human rights issues as they relate to North Korea. So examining if Tokyo could be the venue is a worthwhile undertaking. Having Japan signal its non-partisan support for the suffering of the North Korean people would certainly further encourage Washington and Seoul.

IPS: Did the abductee’s families and their supporters sponsor your trip to Japan? RC: No, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre sponsored my visit

IPS: What would you like the International Red Cross do regarding Korea? RC: The International Red Cross (IRC), by its own admission, completely failed to protect European Jewry as it was decimated by the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany during World War II. In 2009, the IRC should formally and consistently request visit to camps in North Korea, to compile a list of the inmates and help identify and gain the release of family members guilty of no other crime than their loved one’s arrest. It may be a long road, but it’s a process long overdue.

IPS: The North Korea Freedom Coalition has sent Secretary [Hillary] Clinton a letter in which you asked her to meet with the Japanese abductees families. Can you tell us a little more about that and if you think she will meet with them? RC: Secretary Clinton is in a unique position to signal the new administration’s commitment to the North Korea human rights issues by meeting with families of the abductees. Such a meeting puts a human face on an issue that has not yet resonated with the American public to the extent it needs to. It’s too early to tell but we will certainly try our best and she is knowledgeable about their plight.

IPS: What do you think of the Clinton and Bush administrations’ policies of dealing with North Korea. RC: Well intentioned with a primary goal of containing the nuclear issue. Judging by where we are today, they both failed. This proves that North Korea actually needs more, not less, attention by the new administration – from nuclear to human rights…

IPS: Do you think President Obama will be more active on human rights? RC: Yes, and it seems the Obama administration will look for ways to working more closely in tandem with other nations and international organisations.

IPS: As one of the leading international authorities on issues related to digital hate and in the Internet, have you seen a spike in hate toward the Jewish people? If so, why? RC: The first hate site appeared in 1995. Today there are more than 10,000 with the viral nature of 2.0 technologies empowering terror and hate groups in ways never imaginable just a few short years ago.

Internet technologies have also served as incubators for outlandish and insidious conspiracy theories. It is also becoming more and more difficult for authorities to track or trace dangerous communications online.

And now governments like Iran and supporters of controversial leaders like Hugo Chavez harness the Internet to mainstream anti-Jewish and virulent anti-Israel hatred, which inevitably spawns or justifies violence and threats against Jews. We are preparing our new report for 2009 that will show how ‘FACEBOOK’ and ‘YOUTUBE’ are being used by extremists.

As for the current spike in anti-Jewish hate and violence…it is traceable to the Gaza war where protestors against Israeli actions too often and too enthusiastically have embraced Hamas’ agenda as the main Palestinian narrative. No surprise then calls for Jews to the ovens!

IPS: What is the message you would like to give our readers. RC: In this Internet age we should use the technologies available to us to break down barriers and intolerance… Not build new firewalls for hate and portals for terror. Invite people to look at our websites www.wiesenthal.com and for Muslims to go to www.askmusa.org

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