Science Talk

Dan Clore · Guest

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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http://tinyurl.com/6p8s6p
July 9, 2008
Police Outnumber Protesters at G-8 Gathering
BY MARTIN FACKLER

DATE, Japan -- They descended on this sleepy fishing town, some with
faces wrapped in white bandannas, carrying red banners and shouting
slogans. But the 200 anti-globalization marchers, demonstrating against
world leaders meeting at a lake resort a half hour away on Tuesday,
quickly found themselves outnumbered by the police, who formed a moving
cordon around them, and followed in a half dozen blue buses and vans.

“This security is really overkill,” said one marcher, Bill Hackwell, an
antiwar activist who arrived last week from San Francisco. “We’re not
trying to crash the summit’s gates.”

As Japan hosts leaders of the so-called Group of Eight on its bucolic
northernmost island of Hokkaido, it has deployed one of the heaviest
security operations in the group’s history. But whether this has helped
the meeting escape the violence of previous venues is under intense
debate, with many here criticizing the police presence as excessive --
and expensive.

“If violent protesters did not show up, it was because Hokkaido is so
far away,” said Masaaki Ohashi, vice chairman of the 2008 Japan G-8
Summit NGO Forum, a coalition of Japanese non-government groups meeting
on the summit meeting’s sidelines. “We did not need all these policemen
tromping around Hokkaido.”

According to the National Police Agency, Japan is spending about $280
million for security at the meeting, which ends Wednesday. That is more
than double the $130 million that Germany spent last year when it hosted
the meeting.

Japan has mobilized some 21,000 police officers, including 16,000 from
other parts of Japan, who have essentially locked down an entire corner
of Hokkaido, an island the size of Ireland. Germany marshaled some
16,000 police officers and 1,100 soldiers. Japan has also deployed extra
police officers in Tokyo and other main cities, where they stand guard
at train stations and street corners and man roadblocks.

The police presence was heavy around Date (pronounced DA-tay), which is
about 12 miles south of Lake Toya, the meeting venue. Groups of police
officers stopped cars for inspection, and sealed off roads leading to
the site. Offshore, armed cruisers were visible, a rare sight in a
nation that does not even have a full-fledged military.

So far, Japan has not seen the violent protests that marred some
previous summit meetings. In Germany last year, tens of thousands of
people clashed with the police and blocked roads. The largest
demonstration here came Saturday, when some 3,000 mostly Japanese
demonstrators marched in Hokkaido’s main city of Sapporo, more than an
hour north of Lake Toya. Four were arrested, including a photographer
for Reuters, after scuffles with police.

Anti-globalization activists here say the smaller, more peaceful
protests reflect their nation’s political apathy and the low level of
violence in Japan. Still, Japanese officials said they wanted the police
presence just in case, to avoid a repeat of the protests in Germany.

The buildup also seemed to reflect a broader international trend toward
ever increasing levels of security at global events. Government
officials and international relations experts say tighter security is
needed because of the threat of violent protests and terrorist attacks.

They say security started to get particularly tight after 2001,
following demonstrations at a G-8 meeting in Italy that left one
protester dead, and the Sept. 11 attacks that year in the United States.

The summits themselves have grown more elaborate. The first such global
meeting in 1975 in France was an informal gathering of six heads of
government and a handful of journalists. This year, in addition to the
core group of eight industrialized nations, leaders from 14 developing
nations also attended to discuss issues from climate change to African
aid. Some 5,000 journalists also attended.

For Japan, the summit was also a chance to raise its global profile at a
time when it faces economic eclipse in Asia from rising powers China and
India. International relations experts say the security measures were
just Japan’s way of being safe instead of sorry.

“Japan just wants to be very thorough and be ready for all
contingencies,” said Junichi Takase, a professor of international
relations at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies. “The number of police
might seem excessive to Americans or Europeans, but it makes Japanese
feel more secure.”

However, there have also been extensive complaints of harsh security
practices. Police officers have singled out non-Asians for questioning
at airports, and ordered hotels across Japan to copy identification of
all non-Japanese. Japanese immigration authorities have been
particularly hard on known foreign political activists, delaying or
barring their entry into Japan ahead of the summit.

Walden Bello, a sociologist who is a member of Focus on the Global
South, an anti-globalization group, said he was questioned for an hour
at a Japanese airport. According to Japanese NGOs, some 30 people have
been denied visas or entry at the border, including 23 South Korean farm
and labor activists turned away or held by immigration officials last week.

“It is pure harassment,” Dr. Bello said. “They didn’t want us to come.”

In Date, protesters say they face a constant and overwhelming police
presence. A few hundred anarchists, anti-capitalists and activists for
Hokkaido’s indigenous Ainu people have held daily protests in the town,
with some camping nearby. While the police prevented them from getting
too close to the meeting site, on Monday they said they got as far as
the edge of Lake Toya. In the distance on the lake’s other side, they
said they could see the large white hotel where leaders were meeting,
but could only yell their slogans across the wide blue water.

One protester, an anarchist from Sapporo in a metal-studded leather
jacket and rainbow-colored Mohawk, who gave his name only as Yoh, said
the heavy police presence was not a deterrent because it was common at
all protests in Japan.

“They don’t want us to infect locals with our radical ideas,” he said.

But local residents who watched the procession said both the protesters
and the police -- and even the summit meeting itself -- were all equally
unwelcome. Shoichi Igara, a 71-year-old scallop fisherman, griped that
the protesters were scaring local schoolchildren, while security
measures prevented him from going to sea at the height of the scallop
season.

“It’s all just a hassle,” he said. “I just wish they’d all leave.”

--
Dan Clore

My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
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News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"