IRAQ WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL HELD IN JAPAN
by Brian Covert / Independent Journalist Thursday April 29, 2004 at 07:41 AM
A citizens tribunal seeking to indict US President George Bush for war crimes in Iraq held
its third public hearing in Kobe, Japan on Sunday, April 25, presenting evidence and bearing
witness to the suffering of the Iraqi people.
Iraq War Crimes Tribunal Held in Japan
By Brian Covert
Independent Journalist
KOBE, JAPAN - A citizens tribunal seeking to indict US President George Bush for war crimes in Iraq
held its third public hearing here Sunday, April 25, presenting evidence and bearing witness to the
suffering of the Iraqi people.
An estimated 350 people throughout the day attended the 3rd International Criminal Tribunal for Iraq
(ICTI) HyogoPublic Hearing, which featured direct testimony from a visiting Iraqi labor union leader,
firsthand news footage ofunfolding events in Iraq by an independent Japanese journalist, and a host
of performances by university studentsand other activists in Japan.
"The Japanese government has offered up Okinawa as a training ground for the US military forces to
go and commitmassacres in Fallujah [Iraq],"one Japanese activist, a Mr. Nakakuwa, told the audience.
"Therefore, the Japanesegovernment, along with the US and Britain, is a war criminal."
That sentiment was echoed thoughout the day by the tribunalΥs organizers, guest speakers and
performers. Everpresent on the stage here Sunday were also models of the two "defendants" in
absentia: Bush and Japanese PrimeMinister Junichiro Koizumi.
The series of tribunals is being organized and supported by a variety of academics, grassroots
activists, journalistsand citizens groups throughout Japan.
"We need to create a war crimes tribunal of our own making," organizers of the ICTI said in a
preliminary appeal inAugust 2003.
"[W]e need to collect pieces of evidence of war crimes committed by Bush, pile them up, and analyze
them. Weneed to elucidate in light of international law that the war by Bush was nothing but an
invasion. This tribunal is astage for [that] sake."
One of those here on that stage to testify was Aso Jabbar, representative of a labor union called
the Union ofUnemployed in Iraq (UUI), who is currently visiting Japan and raising funds for his
organization's activities in Iraq.
Jabbar stressed that the majority of ordinary Iraqi people are now facing two main enemies: the US-
led occupationforces and violent Muslim fundamentalists.
"It's true they [Muslim fundamentalists] are fighting the US occupying forces,"Jabbar said. "But they
are attackingat the same time the civilian people. They are attacking the progressive organizations.
And they have the strategyto establish an Islamic government in Iraq."
Jabbar said the UUI calls for the "end of the occupation and withdrawl of the U.S. and coalition
occupying forcesbecause we regard them as the major source of the insecure situation in Iraq."
Contrary to American military and media propaganda, most Iraqi people do not want the US-led
military forces intheir country, he said.
"The majority of the Iraqi people do not agree with the occupation and they are against it,"said
Jabbar, who alsorepresents the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI).
"They are against the American policies and they have the experience. And they have not the feeling
that their liveshave been changed," he continued. "Saddam [Hussein] has been removed and the
situation is deteriorating: thesecurity situation, the living conditions, the situation of women,
situation of the unemployed and the labormovement Ρ everything is deteriorating. So the people
have protests and demands, and they want to change theirlives."
Also standing in their way of that change, he says, are the dangerous forces of what
he called extreme right-wing"political Islam."
"These militant groups, they are so aggressive that the ordinary people, they fear them," Jabbar
told the audience."You see in the interviews that the [Iraqi] people are protesting against the
occupation, but they are saying nothingabout the military resistance or the Islamic resistance
or the rest of the Baath Party"of former Iraqi leader SaddamHussein.
"The majority of them, they are secret organizations," he said of the fundamentalist groups.
"They are workingunderground and they practice only armed violence. So the normal people,
they have angst and fear to speak or tocriticize in public their actions."
The ICTI was created last year to give ordinary citizens in Japan a voice in the events then unfolding
in Iraq, amid theJapanese governmentΥs plans to send its Self-Defense Forces to Iraq in violation of
JapanΥs Constitution. About550 Japanese SDF troops are now based in Iraq, including in Samawah,
an area reported to be highly contaminatedwith depleted uranium from US military weapons.
One of those who has recently returned from Iraq was independent journalist Akihiro Nonaka,
founder and head of aTokyo-based company, Asia Press International.
"We independently report what the mass media doesn't report," said Nonaka. "And the mass
media is not reportingthe suffering of civilian victims in Iraq."
Nonaka said he recently returned from a trip to Palestine and Iraq, where he and his crew
managed to film theongoing wars there.
He aired some of his Iraq video footage at the tribunal, including dramatic scenes of
enraged crowds of Iraqi peopleshouting "Down, down Bush!"and "America, no!" as they
surrounded US military vehicles with seemingly bewilderedUS soldiers inside.
"America's history as a nation was created through the killing of its own indigenous peoples,
" Nonaka said. "The USthinks that "We are good, and those who are against us are evil.' Bush
himself uses the word 'evil'."What America is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq is like the old
Westerns, based on the overly simple idea of goodversus evil,' Nonaka added "But the U.S.
is ignorant when it comes to Islam. So the anti-US reactions in Iraq arerelated to this."
He cited the the United States' defeat in Vietnam decades ago to a lack of true understanding
of the Vietnamesepeople, a pattern the US is repeating now in the Middle East.
"America doesn't try to understand Iraqi society, Iraqi history, the history of Islam as a religion,"
Nonaka said"Because the US thinks its own democracy is so great, it doesn't hear the voices
of the Iraqi people. And the USthinks of Islam as something underdeveloped."
Nonaka also had harsh words for prime minister Koizumi of Japan, who has taken up the cause
of holding theJapanese citizenry accountable to jiko-sekinin (individual responsibility),
following the return of five Japanesecitizens recently held hostage in Iraq.
"The Japanese government keeps saying how it undertook so many actions for the release of
the hostages," Nonakasaid. "But that is the job of the government; that's what we pay taxes
for. [I want to say to the Koizumigovernment] Don't keep talking about it - just do it!"
Nonaka said the recent US blockade and killing of civilians in Fallujah are a kind of measuring
stick for those who callthemselves journalists and those who really are ones.
"One of the [five Japanese] hostages, Junpei Yasuda, like some real journalists, tried to
go to Fallujah to documentwhat is happening there," Nonaka said. "I think you can't call
yourself a journalist if you don't want to go coverFallujah."
The current series of Iraqi tribunals follows in the footsteps of a similar tribunal in Japan
last year - the InternationalCriminal Tribunal for Afghanistan (ICTA) - which, after a series
of public hearings, found Bush guilty of war crimes inAfghanistan.
Noting that Bush and other world leaders are unlikely to be tried in any national or international
court, ICTI organizerslast December adopted a statute that outlines the tribunal's jurisdiction
concerning Iraq. It includes trying personsfor crimes of aggression and genocide, as well as
crimes against humanity and crimes of war.
The ICTI will hold several more public hearings throughout Japan this year prior to its scheduled
final judgment inDecember in Tokyo. A related body, the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), is
scheduled to render its own final judgmentin March 2005 in Istanbul, Turkey.
The Tribunal Begins
by Brian Covert / Independent Journalist Thursday April 29, 2004 at 07:41 AM
Akira Maeda, professor of international criminal law at Tokyo Zokei University, offers opening
remarks at the ICTI meeting in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture. Maeda, one of the tribunal's chief
proponents, was also instrumental in organizing a similar series of Afghanistan war crime
tribunals last year in Japan.
The Defendants
by Brian Covert / Independent Journalist Thursday April 29, 2004 at 07:41 AM
The Defendants: Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and US President George Walker Bush
The Real News
by Brian Covert / Independent Journalist Thursday April 29, 2004 at 07:41 AM
Japanese youth activists stage a performance of a "news report" from Iraq that the mainstream
media are said to be missing: the massacre of innocent civilians by US-led forces.
The Performers
by Brian Covert / Independent Journalist Thursday April 29, 2004 at 07:41 AM
The group readies to take a bow after its performance.
The People
by Brian Covert / Independent Journalist Thursday April 29, 2004 at 07:41 AM
Some of the 350 visitors who attended the Kobe tribunal throughout the day.
The Experienced
by Brian Covert / Independent Journalist Thursday April 29, 2004 at 07:41 AM
A performance of the music and dance of Okinawa, another nation
that remains occupied by the US and Japan.
The Troupes
by Brian Covert / Independent Journalist Thursday April 29, 2004 at 07:41 AM
One of the several music and dance performances at the tribunal, this one with Japanese
performers in the roles of Muslim women and foreign soldiers bearing machine guns.
The Testimony
by Brian Covert / Independent Journalist Thursday April 29, 2004 at 07:41 AM
Aso Jabbar (right), Iraqi representative from the Union of Unemployed in Iraq, and interpreter
Reiko Watanabe, speaking at the tribunal. "ItΥs very, very unimaginable how so many people
in Iraq are inthis difficult situation without clean drinking water, electricity, wages and basic
living conditions..."Jabbar testified.
The Sharing
by Brian Covert / Independent Journalist Thursday April 29, 2004 at 07:41 AM
The Iraqi labor leader, sharing the stage with The Defendants.
The Truth
by Brian Covert / Independent Journalist Thursday April 29, 2004 at 07:41 AM
Independent journalist Akihiro Nonaka, head of the Tokyo-based company Asia Press
International:"Koizumi says that international aid is a matter between
governments, not NGOs.But I think that is absolutely mistaken."
The Appeal
by Brian Covert / Independent Journalist Thursday April 29, 2004 at 07:41 AM
The daylong tribunal on Iraq winds to a close with final words from activists hoisting the
charactersTETTAI (Withdraw). Other signs include a blue caricature of Japanese
prime minister Koizumi and US vice president Dick Cheney ("Got Oil?").
The Judgment?
by Brian Covert / Independent Journalist Thursday April 29, 2004 at 07:41 AM
How will the International Criminal Tribunal on Iraq eventually judge the actions
of the two defendants? Stay tuned to continuing coverage to find out....