Japan Press Weekly

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2024 April 24 - May 7 [JCP]

Ogata talks with French Communist Party national secretary

Japanese Communist Party Vice Chair Ogata Yasuo on May 4 held talks with French Communist Party (PCF) National Secretary Fabien Roussel in Paris after participating in the PCF-hosted peace conference.

The two talked about their impressions about the conference and reached the common understanding that the conference made clear the challenges ahead for strengthening joint struggles and solidarity under a situation where the world is in a state of turmoil. They exchanged their views on the political situation in Japan and France and agreed on the need to strengthen friendship and cooperation between the two parties.

Noting that Roussel in his closing speech at the conference said, “Stop sending young people to battlefield!”, Ogata said, “In Japan, this phrase has been used for a long time as an anti-war slogan. Under the current government attempting to turn Japan into a war-fighting nation, young people forced in future to go into battle becomes more plausible.”

Following the talks with Roussel, Ogata held conversations with Portuguese Communist Party member Pimenta Lopes, member of the left group in the European Parliament, and Belgian Labor Party member Medhi Salhi, who is in charge of internal affairs policy, respectively. Topics they discussed included the European Parliament election slated for June 9 and their countries’ domestic situations.

In talks with Israeli Communist Party Central Committee member Nimrod Flascchenberg, Ogata expressed his solidarity with the Israelis who oppose the ongoing genocide against Palestinians by the Israeli government and continue to speak out in the parliament, officially called the Knesset, and in communities to oppose the government policy of waging the war on Palestinians in Gaza.

Another theme took up in these talks was how to increase solidarity to the survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which will mark the 80th anniversary next year, and to increase the collaborative effort to advance the movement calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. This was highlighted in the conference.