 Annual anti-base conference ended The Japan Peace Conference 2004 ended on November 22 and participants turned homeward, renewing their resolution to remove U.S. bases in Japan and defend the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution. The three-day conference was held in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture. At the closing plenary, participants responded with a round of applause to the organizing committee's call for a groundswell of the anti-base movement, in particular in opposition to the ongoing global U.S. military realignment. Nishikawa Ikuya, secretary-general of the Central Action Committee against the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, said that the discussions in the conference brought to light the deepening isolation that the U.S. Bush administration is experiencing in the world as it pushes ahead with the global realignment of its forces as well as the contradictions sharpening between the U.S. military presence and the well being of the affected people and municipalities. Nishikawa, on behalf of the organizing committee, proposed setting a period of intensive action from November 30 to December 14 to increase national activities in opposition to extending the dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq and calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. The SDF dispatch to Iraq expires on December 14. Nishikawa also called on the participants to carry out nationwide anti-base activities on December 21 in solidarity with the Okinawan struggle against the planned construction of a new U.S. base in the Henoko district on Nago City. December 21 will mark the 8th anniversary of the referendum in which Nago residents voted their refusal to the U.S. base construction plan for their community. (end) |