March 11th 2018 Anti-Nuclear Plant Fukushima Action
Let’s stand up with Fukushima to stop Constitutional Amendment and War!
Decommission All Nuclear Plants and Crush the Olympic Games!
US Trump administration has issued a “Nuclear Posture Review” based on the new national security strategy, which declared “development and provision of smaller-yield nuclear warheads” and presented a policy of pre-emptive use of nuclear weapon. It is a war declaration on Korean peninsula. In a quick response to this US move, the Abe administration praised the new US defense posture as deserving high estimation and has accelerated for his part the attempt to present in the parliament the revision of the Constitution to eliminate the 9th clause which stipulates renunciation of war and non-maintenance of war potentials. The intention of the Abe administration is to achieve the constitutional revision before the reactionary imperial succession ceremony planned on May 1, 2019.
We of Japanese labor unions are required to confront squarely the present adverse situation, in which the system-friendly labor unions represented by the Rengo (Japan Confederation of Trade Unions) have completely surrendered to the reactionary attack of changing the labor law to destroy labor unions and labor movement.
On March 17th, “Fukushima Inhabitants Big Rally 2018 for Fukushima Without Nuclear Plants” is planned in Naraha town with the participation of labor unions of the Kanto and Tohoku region and also other parts of Japan. Naraha town is located in the vicinity of the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and is still under dangerous radioactive exposure. After the nuclear plant disaster, the evacuation order was issued to Naraha inhabitants, an exceptional case for the government which is inclined to play down the risk in the contaminated areas and reluctant to organize necessary evacuation of the inhabitants there.
To organize an open-door rally in Naraha means to declare “It is all right in Naraha and Fukushima. There is no more to worry about. You can be back here.” This rally is a criminal cooperation with the Abe administration which forcibly urges Fukushima evacuee people to go home, a flagrant assault on the evacuated Fukushima people who have been courageously struggling against forced return to hometown.
The government is attempting to bring Fukushima evacuee back to their home towns under high degree radioactive contamination. The official general limit of radioactive contamination was exceptionally raised in the case of Fukushima up to 20milli-Sievert per year.
Though the child thyroid cancer has been detected in about 200 children, the government insists that no radioactive influence is found in these cases and is diminishing the opportunities of thyroid cancer examination in the official health check in Fukushima. Actually a large number of children have been excluded from the official health check and even when cases of thyroid cancer are detected no report is made.
Let’s ask the labor union members who are going to participate in the planned Naraha rally if they are willing to act as agents of Abe and TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) in their deceitful campaign of “restoration” and “safety” of contaminated Fukushima. And let’s discuss with them; When you claim that there has been any more nuclear disaster or radioactive contamination in Fukushima, it means you abandon the historical principle of the struggle of labor unions and working class people since the end of World War II: “Nuke is incompatible with human being. We are absolutely against nuclear weapons and nuclear war.”
The struggle of Doro-Mito (National Railway Motive Power Union of Mito) against labor under radioactive contamination and against the reopening of the Joban-line (running through the heavily radioactive contaminated areas) has been developing in strengthening solidarity with the struggle of the nuclear evacuees to oppose to the forced return to home town. The power to crush Abe’s plan of constitutional revision and the Olympic Games will be developed through strengthening these struggles. Labor union’s determined struggle with the slogan of “absolute no” will win.
All the people who are fighting against the governmental policy of forced return to home town and concerned inhabitants all over Japan have got an enormous encouragement from the struggles in Namie and Tomioka (both in Fukushima) on April 1st and October 21st respectively, and the powerful action against the reopening of the Joban-line of Doro-Mito and Doro-Fukushima.
On March 11th seven years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, we are faced with the situation, in which a war could happen at every moment. The significance of this commemoration day is that Fukushima, where we have been deprived of all of our life, revives as a place to create a new struggle to break down the attempts of constitutional revision, war, nuclear plants and the Olympic Games. Workers have power to change the society. Labor union should assume the pivotal position in organizing all the angers of Fukushima people, workers, farmers, inhabitants into a forceful unity. Let’s build up a society of workers without war or nuke with the combined power of young people, students and international solidarity!
Stop war in Korea by the anger of Fukushima!
We ask you all to join us in the Fukushima rally on March 11th 2018 or send us a letter of endorsement.
Date and Time: March 11 (Sunday), 1 p.m.
Venue: Big Hall of Civil Culture Center of Koriyama city in Fukushima prefecture
Demonstration: Starts at 3 p.m. for the Koriyama Central Railway Station
Organizer: Executive Committee of March 11 Fukushima Anti-Nuke Action