First Battleground for Japanese Troops

On the order of January 9, an advance team of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force (SDF) is leaving for Samawah in southeastern Iraq on January 16. This is the first-ever deployment of SDF units in the battlefield.

According to the Japanese government, the goal of the dispatched SDF troops is not only to assist what they call reconstruction of the post-war Iraq but also to help ensure the security there, meaning to crack down the anti-occupation resistance in Iraq by the use of armed force as a member of the occupation forces. It is the violation of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution which renounces war and use of force. We never allow this and demand that the government immediately cancel the SDF deployment in Iraq.

Mass Killing of Iraqi People

Day by day, the whole world is getting a clearer picture of the Iraq war, which is nothing but a war of aggression without any legitimacy waged by and in the interest of the US-UK coalition of global capitalism. No weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the only excuse of the war, have been found. Out of 1,400 members of the WMD Investigation Team organized by CIA, 400 personnel have already returned home. Former US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed that the Bush administration had intended to invade Iraq, trying to find an excuse for pre-emptive war against Iraq long before the September 11 incidents in 2001. The US and the UK have no justice on their sides, and are isolated from the whole world. There is no single nation that would listen to them by sending its troops other than Japan.

The occupation forces continue to kill the Iraqi people and destroy their life. The SDF troops, as members of the occupation forces, are going to play the role of the enemy against the Iraqi people.

Radiation of 300 times larger than normal is measured in Samawah. SDF soldiers are going to be irradiated together with the Iraqi people. Neither the life of the Iraqi people nor that of SDF soldiers is cared about at all there.

Go home, Occupation Forces

In the meantime, the Koizumi administration is sending out the troops to Iraq despite strong objections from the majority of the people. It is trying to change Japan into a country ready to use armed forces on the people of the world any time it likes as one of the most bellicose wings of global capitalism.

The Iraqi people do not want any troops to come. They want the occupation forces to withdraw.

We have to do everything possible to stop the SDF troops from invading Iraq. Let us talk to members of the SDF and their families and ask them not to drive their loved ones into hurting the people of Iraq. Let us march in solidarity with the people of the world on March 20 and demand the withdrawal of the occupation forces. Drive away the occupation forces from Iraq. Get rid of Bush, Blair and Koizumi from the position of decision-maker. Let us create a world free from wars and full of peace and democracy.