  Bring SDF home immediately from Iraq -- Akahata editorial, November 12Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro supports U.S. military attacks that are indiscriminately killing Fallujah residents in Iraq. He said, "This must succeed in order to restore security," indicating that he is willingly backing the U.S. military repression. It is against international law Some of the 300,000 Fallujah residents had fled the city before the start of the mass attack. But a considerable number of the residents are trapped in the city as U.S. forces are sealing off escape routes and conducting air strikes and ground attacks. Many residents have reportedly been killed. The International Committee of the Red Cross issued a statement warning against injuring civilians. U.S. forces are indiscriminately attacking anything that moves, and even destroying hospitals and clinics. Reuters on November 9 reported, "There is not a single surgeon left in Fallujah." International law prohibits attacking civilians. The established principles of the law of war include protection of civilians from being targets of attacks. The 1949 Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in time of war states in Article 18, "Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack." The "Additional Protocol to the Geneva Convention" provides that "civilians shall not be the object of attack" (Article 51) and that, "Civilian objects shall not be the object of attack or of reprisals" (Article 52). The U.S. military massacre of civilians is a war crime in violation of international law. Such brutal acts cannot be justified by the argument of "eradication of terrorism". As a contracting party to these treaties, Japan should urge the U.S. government to immediately stop the indiscriminate killing of the people. In protest against the U.S. full-scale assault on the city, the Iraqi Islamic Party, a major Sunni political organization in Iraq, announced its withdrawal from the Iraqi Interim Government. The Association of Muslim Scholars decided to boycott Iraq's parliamentary elections scheduled for next January. The illegal crackdown with the use of excess force is further aggravating the situation in Iraq and causing an increasing conflict within the provisional Iraqi government. Unconditional support for such a military crackdown only adds to the hardship of the Iraqi people. The Air Self-Defense Force airlifts U.S. soldiers, arms, and other munitions from a U.S. military base in Kuwait, thus lending U.S. forces a hand in killing Iraqi people and destroying their homes. The Ground Self-Defense Force is stationed in Samawah, which is clearly a combat zone. This is violation of the law that provides that the SDF can only be deployed in non-combat zones. Early this month, a rocket shell landed inside the GSDF camp in Samawah and penetrated a steel container. In the run-up to the U.S. all-out assault on Fallujah, the interim Iraqi government declared a nationwide state of emergency, excluding the Kurdish districts, because it predicted the country would be in a state of war. Farfetched argument disregarding law Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro, however, used a farfetched argument that the SDF carries out its duty in a non-combat zone. By saying this, the government even ignores the law they made. The dispatch of the SDF to Iraq is unconstitutional. It is also impermissible in light of the special measures law on Iraq and absolutely absurd to revise the "basic plan" which is based on this law in order to extend the SDF deployment term beyond December 15, the date when the SDF deployment will expire. The Japanese Communist Party has consistently called for the SDF withdrawal from Iraq without delay. (end) |