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G8 summit to be held amid growing repression of protestors in Japan

07/07/08

Click below for footage of brutal arrest of sound truck driver:

Click below for footage of Reuters reporter arrest, the truck driver and some of the demonstration:

The G8 Summit will be held in Japan this week amid growing tension and repression of protestors.

The G8 (group of eight) is comprised of eight of the richest and most powerful nations on earth – Britain, USA, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Japan. It was established in the mid seventies, following a global oil crisis and recession, to allow the foremost industrialised nations on the planet to combine their interests and work for the mutual benefit of their respective countries. This remit inevitably led to the G8 working together for the benefit of the collective ‘business interests’ of the very rich and the very powerful.

While the G8 countries have a combined gross annual product equal to 65% of the world’s entire annual product they have a combined population of just 14% of the worlds total population. In addition to this massive economic strength the G8 countries include the world’s greatest military powers and the vast bulk of the world’s nuclear weapons capacity.

In 2007, the combined G8 military spending was $850 billion (€543.5 billion, £432 billion). This was 72% of the world’s total military expenditures. Four of the G8 members – Britain, United States of America, France and Russia – together account for 96% of the world’s nuclear weapons.

On the basis of these realities global human rights activists have continuously campaigned to expose the G8 for what it is – a forum for rich men to make themselves and their friends richer, regardless of the misery afflicted upon the world in the process.

Environmental and anti-capitalist protests, which have become a constant accompaniment to G8 meetings, have been consistently met with state brutality. The Japanese establishment has already demonstrated that it will follow the lead given in this regard by other G8 countries. It will not allow its citizens to embarrass the countries top brass in front of the world through the mounting of massive protests. This seems to be part of a growing trend of repressive tendencies by the Japanese establishment against anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation activists.

Last week, large-scale protests were broken up by the Japanese police and its organisers and attendees were arrested en masse.

Some of the activists involved gave their accounts:

“What we have witnessed in the streets of Sapporo is part of an ongoing and escalating campaign to suppress the movement for real democracy in Japan,” said Marina Sitrin, professor and member of the National Lawyers Guild, a US based human rights organization that is a part of the No! G8 Legal Team.

Ko Watari, of WATCH, a Japanese legal network created to document police and government misconduct during the anti G8 protests gave the following account. “We were surprised by the excessive force used by police in today's demonstration… This was a non-violent demonstration where no acts against property or people took place, or even appeared likely to take place.”

Footage (above) shows a Reuters cameraman being seized by plainclothes police who confiscate his camera.

The arrest of a sound-truck driver followed immediately thereafter. Footage of the driver’s arrest (above) shows him screaming in pain as the police pulled him out of the truck, his foot stuck in the steering wheel.

Japanese law permits police to hold and interrogate suspects for 23 days without formal charges. They can interrogate suspects for up to 12 hours at a time. Arrestees can be forced to sit on their knees the entire time they are awake, not being able to move, even to use the bathroom without asking permission.

éirígí chairperson Brian Leeson has echoed the calls of the anti-globalisation movement and asked that people show solidarity and support for the protestors,

“It is a gross contradiction and sick irony that the people who cause the worlds problems meet every year to talk about fixing those same problems. The reality is that the members of the G8 could, if they wanted, put an end to world poverty and global war.

“The heads of state that make up the G8 are among the most dangerous people on earth and stand over policies which day and daily threaten the very existence of the human race. It is no understatement to say that protesting their presence wherever they go is a human duty.

“We commend the events organisers and condemn the tactics of the Japanese security forces acting at the behest of the G8, and in turn we ask that everyone concerned with human rights, environmental protection, peace and dignity for the planets population show their support in whatever way they can.”

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