Other Voices For Peace

Break the Cycle of Violence and Revenge

Korean American Coalition

Human Rights and the Reaction to Terrorism

Statement from Indigenous Environmental Network on the War xc

In the Wake of September 11

A Call for Global Solidarity Against Global War

Viewpoints from the International Law

Break the Cycle of Violence and Revenge:
An Appeal for Response Based on Legal Principles

September 20th, 2001

On September 11, there were terrorist attacks on World Trade Center and Pentagon by the apparently hijacked aircrafts. These inhumane acts of indiscriminate terrorism are never to be tolerated, and we need to confront it with a resolute attitude.

We strongly condemn the perpetrators, and would like to express our most heartfelt sympathies and condolences to the victims and their families.

The United States has called upon military retaliation on the organizations that are alleged to have protected the terrorists. However, the cycle of violence and revenge will nurture more terrorism, leading to endless retaliatory acts. Any military retaliation not based on the principles of international law may defeat the cause to end the terrorism.

We believe that to stand against the threats to our civil societies, it is most effective if strict justice is brought and the responsibilities are clarified, based on the legal principles such as the ones defined in the UN system.

We sincerely hope that there will be a sober and rational response based on the principles of law, in order to end despicable indiscriminate terrorism in the future.

Coalition of Citizens and Suprapartisan Members of the Congress Reflecting on Terrorist Attacks in the U.S.

Read more on the Global Peace Campaign website: www.peace2001.org/gpc_e/index.html

Thursday, September 13, 2001

Korean American Coalition

Korean American Coalition Denounces Terrorist Attacks, Cautions Against Racial Scapegoating

The Korean American Coalition (KAC) expresses its deepest condolences to the many Americans affected by recent terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC. Furthermore, KAC strongly condemns the terrorists who perpetrated these heinous crimes. However, KAC also denounces reported attacks of retaliation aimed at innocent Arab, Muslim, and Asian Americans around the country.

Community-based organizations, news media, and law enforcement agencies have reported incidents of verbal threats and physical violence aimed at Arab and Asian American individuals and groups. Muslim groups have also been targeted in Islamic stores, centers, and religious institutions all over the nation. The Associated Press has already reported the following incidents:

In Chicago, a firebomb was tossed Wednesday at an Arab-American community center.

In Huntington, NY, a 75-year-old man who was drunk tried to run over a Pakistani woman in the parking lot of a shopping mall, police said. The man then followed the woman into a store and threatened to kill her for "destroying my country".

A man in a ski mask in Gary, Ind., fired an assault rifle at a gas station where Hassan Awdah, a U.S. citizen born in Yemen, was working Wednesday.

KAC National Executive Director, Charles Kim, stated, "All of us must remember the terrible mistakes we made as a country when thousand of innocent Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps during WWII in the hysteria following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Any attack on someone of perceived Arab ancestry is not only an attack on his or her civil rights, but also an attack on our country's sense of justice and equality." The Korean American community also knows what it feels like to be the victim of racial scapegoating. Thousands of Korean American owned stores were burned down during the 1992 LA riots in outrage over the Rodney King verdict.

Korean American Coalition National Website: www.nkac.org KAC-San Francisco Website: www.kacsf.org

Professor William A. Schabas, director, Irish Centre for Human Rights, Galway

Human Rights and the Reaction to Terrorism

The terrorist acts of September 11 may well have been an attack on democracy, as George Bush, Tony Blair and others asserted, but they were no threat to democracy. Democratic regimes have survived far worse. It is the reaction to terrorism that destroys democracies. Modern democracies have perfectly adequate justice systems for dealing with terrorists. We track them down, catch them, bring them to trial and impose fit punishment. That is what the US and the UK did with those responsible for the Lockerbie crash, and for the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dares Salaam. It is what the UN is doing for those accused of genocide and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. How much more healthy it is for democracy that Milosevic be judged by an international court rather than murdered by a cruise missile aimed at his home. As for the two Lockerbie defendants, one was acquitted by Scottish judges earlier this year. Had the advocates of assassination and summary execution prevailed in that case, an innocent man would have been killed in the name of democracy's war on terrorism.

Some American politicians now argue that criminal justice is inadequate because the events of September 11 were an "act of war".But according to international law, we must know what State committed it. A group of individuals, even numbering in the hundreds, cannot commit an "act of war".

Perhaps those who harbour terrorists may themselves be accomplices in an "act of war". But let us remember the last time this bold claim was made, in 1914, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia because a Serbnationalist had assassinated its archduke.It unleashed a cascade of belligerent declarations justified by an earlier equivalent of article 5 of the NATO treaty.

We now look back in horror and bewilderment at how an overreaction to terrorism, in the name of punishment and retribution, provoked a chain of events that ultimately slaughtered an entire generation of European youth.

The anger and even the thirst for vengeance of the victims and their families can well be understood. But any act of reprisal that takes civilian casualties or is directed against civilian objects is quite simply forbidden by international law. It is a war crime. To the extent reprisals are allowed at all, they must target purely military objectives.

The US seeks sympathy for the thousands of innocent victims of this tragedy, and they have it. Our hearts have been broken to see the agony of the bereaved relatives, and an unbearably sad hole in a beloved skyline. But international solidarity should not become a pretext for promoting a US political agenda that has little to do with catching the perpetrators and preventing future crimes.

Above all, if measures are to be taken in the name of protecting democracy, there can be no room for double standards. Only two years ago, in another context, the US argued that a civilian office building in Belgrade was a legitimate military target because it housed a television station. The US justified the resulting deaths of civilian office workers as "collateral damage". If those responsible for attacking the World Trade Centre are ever brought to court, they may invoke this precedent. The scale of the killings was different in Belgrade, but the principle is barely distinguishable.

Let us recall, again and again, that civilians must be spared in any conflict. The right to life is the most fundamental of all human rights. The right to life of thousands of innocent civilians in New York City and Washington has been egregiously violated. But that same right also belongs without exception to civilians in Belgrade, Baghdad and Kabul.

For further information on the Centre and the University, please visit: www.nuigalway.ie/human_rights

Prof. William A. Schabas
Director, Irish Centre for Human Rights
National University of Ireland, Galway
Galway, Ireland

Statement from Indigenous Environmental Network on the War

Here's what U.S. President should have said:

My fellow Americans. I would like to deeply and sincerely apologize to you all, and particularly to those injured and to the loved ones of those lost. You see, largely away from the public eye, my administration and its predecessors have intervened without cease in the affairs of other peoples.

But we have not intervened to advance freedom. We have not intervened to advance democracy. We have not even intervened to protect the interests of the relatively small population of this country.

Instead, we have intervened to advance the business interests of our campaign contributors and networks of friends and advisers, to put down the unrest of the many thousands of foreign people who are left impoverished and disenfranchised by our economic policies, and to ensure the military and political dominance of our country over other nations.

In the last ten years alone America's manipulation of the politics and economies of other people has led us to impose economic policies that reduce access to health care and education in poor countries like Argentina, Turkey, and South Korea. It has led us to arm the governments of countries like Colombia, Israel, Indonesia, and Turkey that themselves use terror - but on a much larger scale than seen today - to suppress the desires of their own people.

It has led us to brutally attack the Iraqi people with both bombs and sanctions in order to cripple their dictator, in the process killing perhaps two hundred innocent Iraqis for every one innocent American who died today.

I apologize on behalf of my own administration, but also on behalf of the Clinton administration, the first Bush administration, the Reagan administration, and previous governments stretching back to the very founding of the country, all of which used military and economic power to conquer other lands, choose their political leaders, or set their economic policies.

I apologize on behalf of both Democrats and Republicans, virtually all of whom have unquestioningly supported these actions.

I apologize on behalf of the business leaders whose interests have motivated these actions.

I apologize on behalf of the news media, which have suppressed discussion of the tremendous negative effects of our foreign policy and which will, in this particular case, refuse to raise the question of why foreigners would be so angry at our country.

Please accept this apology.

Your leaders, without your knowledge or consent, have used the tremendous power of your country to institutionalize inequality and militarism worldwide. While acting in your name, we have pursued the interests of a narrow, tremendously powerful section of the population.

It is for this reason that you suffer today.

I ask the American people to oppose the attacks that this disaster will surely bring against our civil liberties and against our residents of Middle Eastern descent.

Together we must resist the urge to intensify a spiral of retribution and violence, and work instead toward a world in which no one feels so powerless or oppressed that he or she must resort to violence.

Indigenous Environmental Network - National Office P.O. Box 485 Bemidji, Minnesota 56619 - USA Tel: +1 218 751 4967, Fax: +1 218 751 0561
email: ien@igc.org; website: www.ienearth.org/

50 Years Is Enough Network
3628 12th St., N.E.
Washington, DC 20017

In the Wake of September 11 . . .
**Street Protests Cancelled, But Movement for Global Justice Goes Forward**

By Njoki Njoroge Njehu and Soren Ambrose 50 Years Is Enough Network staff

*The Promise of Cleveland*

We were in Cleveland for the Jobs with Justice annual conference from September 7 to September 9. Jobs with Justice, a national coalition of labor union activists, religious organizations, and community groups, has been a close ally and partner of the 50 Years Is Enough Network since the April 2000 mobilization at the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank. The conference drew nearly a thousand people from around the country, plus several international activists. We facilitated the participation of Jonah Gokova from the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development, Molly Dhlamini from the Student Union for Christian Action in South Africa, and Harry Clerveau from the Federation of Unions of Electrical Workers of Haiti.

Jobs with Justice has become a key meeting point for the messages of the anti-corporate-globalization movement and the domestic struggles for the right to organize and a living wage, and against privatization and corporate greed. At the Jobs with Justice national conferences one sees the energy that has renewed labor’s role in the left, and propelled the AFL-CIO toward more progressive positions and more genuine international solidarity.

The buzz at this conference, a very loud buzz, was eager anticipation of the upcoming mobilization at the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington. We left Cleveland with re-invigorated optimism, feeling that the fall mobilization would not only raise public awareness of corporate globalization to unprecedented levels and garner more substantial attention in the media, but also that we just might win concrete changes in the way the IMF and World Bank do business, and thus in the structure of the global economy.

*A World Suddenly Changed*

Thirty-six hours after getting home, we, along with the rest of the world, turned on our televisions to see the World Trade Center, and then the Pentagon, in flames. For us, as for many Kenyans and Tanzanians, it was an experience terrifyingly reminiscent of the August 1998 bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, watching live footage of fires and bleeding injured people, especially in downtown Nairobi, as people mounted desperate rescue missions.

It is already a cliché to say that what happened on September 11 changed the world. Yet because it is still so recent and because so many of us had the unusual, terrifying and, for most of us, unique experience of watching what was at once a world-historical event and an action so outlandish as to make it seem like a fever dream or a Godzilla movie, it is probably not surprising that we need to remind ourselves of it frequently.

As it began to sink in and we started to match up the new reality with the more familiar one, we felt certain that the IMF and World Bank would cancel their meetings. They had already drastically cut the length of the meeting, and it was becoming apparent that they were not relishing the public relations battle they seemed poised to lose. The meetings themselves are little more than ceremonial obligations; why not take the new high road so suddenly in view and avoid a lot of potholes at the same time?

Because the U.S. Treasury Department is the official host of the meetings, it took a while for the obvious to become official. In the meantime we, along with other organizers and in the different coalitions we were working with, especially in Washington, considered what to do about the events and activities we had been planning for months. For the 50 Years Is Enough Network, with a well-defined mission and scope which preclude shifting our focus to, say, anti-militarism, it was very clear that the prospect of delivering our critique of the international financial institutions was neither possible nor appropriate in the face of this massive catastrophe. Three Teach-In Tours to 25 cities with over 70 events were already under way and the "Ending Global Apartheid" Teach-In planned for the end of the month in Washington, DC was coming along well. Most of the communities hosting the Teach-In Tours clearly wanted to continue and our colleagues from Haiti, Panama, India, the Philippines, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Brazil were also comfortable with continuing.

Despite all the conversations and all the essays, it is still impossible to know the real, or the lasting, meaning of September 11. One possible positive outcome would be a puncturing of the myth of U.S. "exceptional-ism," a deeper sense in the U.S. that it is a country like any other; it is not exempted from the anger and violence everywhere in evidence. The most similar events, and arguably the most recent single events that could claim a significance comparable to September 11, are the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Those attacks may have ended the last world war, but they also heralded a new political era — a Cold War marked by intense paranoia, the massive waste of resources on military technology, overblown claims of virtue and evil, the frequent refrain of "patriotism" and "security" as cover for gross abuses of the government’s coercive and investigative powers, and the subordination of the principles of democracy and justice to the imperatives of geopolitical power dynamics, in which virtually any conflict could quickly become a U.S.- Soviet proxy war.

September 11 could become the start of another cold war, at least in how values and facts are distorted. We could be embarking on an era in which the stated principles of the wealthy countries are even more blatantly at odds with their behavior. Between the fall of the Berlin Wall and this moment, the distance between official rhetoric and actual reality has been substantial, but the rhetoric at least provided an opportunity for opponents to expose the hypocrisy of the institutions which claim to assist impoverished people but in fact prioritize safeguarding the profits of corporations.

Already U.S. government officials and officers of the IMF and World Bank have spoken openly of using the institutions’ resources to reward countries, such as Pakistan, for cooperating with U.S. demands, and denying funds to those which do not join the U.S. coalition. This use of the international financial institutions as instruments of the U.S. political agenda has been going on for decades, but since the end of the Cold War there has been a reluctance to acknowledge the fact publicly, which has itself acted as a valuable restraint on the U.S. government’s inclination to use the institutions to serve its own narrow purposes.

Should such an atmosphere descend on the U.S., the organizing priorities of the movement for global justice would likely have to change. Engagement in dialogue with the IMF and World Bank, an exercise the 50 Years Is Enough Network generally finds of limited value, would become pointless, since political imperatives would explicitly outweigh humanitarian or developmental priorities. Mass mobilizations of the type we were planning for the last week of September would likely become more difficult to organize as authorities worry even less about safeguarding constitutional rights.

If this sort of forecast proves true, we suspect our work would place a relatively greater emphasis on organizing and educating on the local level, working to make people see the links between their economic circumstances and the perverse structure of the global economy ­ exactly the sort of work that Jobs with Justice helps us accomplish. We would also encourage Congress to continue questioning the institutions, and challenge the media to continue unraveling the power dynamics under-girding the global economic system. The need for activists in the U.S. to work in conscious solidarity with progressive forces throughout the Global South will only become more critical, both with regard to IMF/World Bank issues and with regard to the overall policies of the U.S. government.

At the "Ending Global Apartheid" teach-in, which the 50 Years Is Enough Network co-sponsored with Essential Action, the Center for Economic Justice/World Bank Bond Boycott, Global Exchange, and the Jubilee USA Network from September 27 to September 29, leading activists from Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Europe, and North America spoke about the prospective problems and potential they see in the new political era. Focus on the Global South, a 50 Years Is Enough Network South Council member with offices in Bangkok, Mumbai (Bombay), and Manila, has already proposed that an international strategy session take place in about a month’s time, when the new political climate will probably be clearer. The international organizations present in Washington for the teach-in considered the possibility of making such a session part of the World Social Forum preparatory meeting in Dakar, Senegal in late October, and will be contacting the organizers there shortly.

*What Might Have Been*

The mobilization planned for Washington for September 23 - October 3, 2001 would likely have attracted more people than the April 2000 events, which drew between 20,000 and 30,000 protesters. The Washington DC police, who generated a lot of "hype" for the event, claimed to be expecting over 100,000 demonstrators — a number no organizer for the Mobilization for Global Justice, the local coalition coordinating many of the events, ever claimed.

One of the reasons we might have seen a significantly larger turnout than last April was the deeper involvement of the AFL-CIO. Last year, the AFL-CIO endorsed the rally in the last few days, and wasn’t able to devote many resources. This year, it got involved over the summer and committed significant resources and staff time to the rally. In addition, the Mobilization coordinated more consciously with the religious community, and, along with the 50 Years Is Enough Network, was strongly supporting a prayer service and vigil on the evening of Saturday, September 29. Although the rally was cancelled, the prayer service took place, with the theme adjusted from a unified focus on the IMF and World Bank to the issues of violence, economic and otherwise.

In comparison to the April 2000 mobilization, we had more time to organize educational events this year, and as a consequence were able to co-sponsor three speaking tours in the eastern half of the United States, each with two or three speakers from the Global South. "Ending Global Apartheid: A Teach-In for Action on the World Bank and IMF" also went forward, albeit with a slightly revised and abbreviated schedule due to cancellations by speakers who could not arrange alternate travel plans from the South. But even with some sixty speaking slots, we confronted an over-abundanceof high-quality speakers rather than a shortage.

The week of actions, far more varied than last year’s, was slated to begin with a rally for immigrants’ rights at the Capitol on September 25, an event that has now been postponed. The ensuing days included a "clean energy march" (exposing the World Bank’s support for fossil fuel energy projects), a series of labor actions targeting retailers selling sweatshop products, Taco Bell (a leading buyer of tomatoes from Florida union-busters), and one of the city’s major parking lot empires (which seeks to deny fair wages and organizing rights to immigrant workers fleeing structural adjustment in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Central America), a protest targeting Citicorp, cited as the world’s most destructive financial services company, and a rally and march opposing the militarization of Latin America.

The IMF and World Bank took far more notice of our efforts this year than last. Over the summer they announced their decision to re-locate their meetings from their usual venue, the city’s largest convention hotel (the Marriott Wardman Park), to their own buildings in downtown Washington. While they cited the surrounding community’s apprehensions about massive crowds and potential turbulence as their reason for moving, the residents were at least as upset about the annual influx of limousines into their streets and driveways — a source of bitter complaint for many years. The Metropolitan Police Department of Washington launched a vigorous effort to portray the protesters as a mob of unruly, violent, and under-infomed young people. The police campaign, unburdened by fidelilty to facts or propriety, encouraged the media to focus on the question of "violence," despite the fact that the reporters who were in Washington for last April’s demonstrations knew that there were no incidents of protester violence then. When the police announced in August their probable intention of building a nine-foot fence around the IMF, the World Bank, the White House, and the Treasury Department, the 50 Years Is Enough Network joined other organizers in a lawsuit seeking to preserve the right to assemble and protest in an effective manner consistent with our constitutional rights (i.e., within eyeshot and earshot of the targets).

In response to the police department’s fear-mongering, and its outrageous request for $50 million (ultimately whittled down to $29 million) from the federal government to provide security, the institutions decided to compress all of their meetings into two days, a decision which would have had the effect of making the institutions even less transparent than they already are.

The 50 Years Is Enough Network joined with Global Exchange, Jobs with Justice, and Essential Action to challenge the institutions to a public debate — something that was arranged quite easily in April 2000, but which seemed to get more complex this year. The IMF and World Bank took the very unusual step of replying via a joint letter prominently displayed on each institution’s website, a step which inspired a brief frenzy of media attention and a front-page story in the Financial Times. We never did finalize details of the debate, which is now on hold. We do intend to make sure that debate, and others, take place in public soon.

Media coverage, in general, was even heavier than last year, or at least was present earlier. Some of it did focus on our issues (e.g. structural adjustment, institutional transparency, debt cancellation, etc.). Our success in turning some reporters away from the "violence question" was greatly assisted by the fact that the organizing coalition, the Mobilization for Global Justice, agreed to a set of four demands of the institutions, which were largely drawn from the 50 Years Is Enough Network’s list of eight demands, worked out in consultation over many months with the members of our South Council. The demands included a call for comprehensive debt cancellation, an end to structural adjustment programs, the opening of Board meetings to the media and public, and an end to support for environmentally and socially destructive projects. By the time of the attacks, we had been interviewed and quoted by the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC, the Financial Times, the Boston Globe, the BBC, Institutional Investor, L.A. Weekly, O Estado do São Paulo,and various radio and television programs around the country. On September 11 itself, the Financial Times published the first of a series of articles on the international movement for economic justice, and they used Soren as the poster-child for showing that the movement has become a "mainstream" rather than a "fringe" phenomenon. The rest of the series, alas, was postponed indefinitely.

Apparently as a result of all the attention being paid to our work, thehead of the IMF’s office of External Affairs decided to go on the offensive. Thomas Dawson responded to a letter by Soren appearing in the Washington Post which detailed how much the IMF and World Bank would owe if they were taxed as a normal profit-making enterprise. Dawson accused him of being "disingenuous" for not highlighting his link to the 50 Years Is Enough Network (one of the organizations ostensibly provoking these expenditures). A week later, he attacked Soren again on the same score, but this time at a press briefing. His harshest words, however, were reserved for 50 Years Is Enough Steering Committee member Robert Naiman; he even accused Naiman’s employer, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), of stealing its name from a British organization. That the IMF had chosen to respond to CEPR’s studies demonstrating the failure of globalization policies by critiquing its name, and to the 50 Years Is Enough Network’s argument that the institutions should contribute to their host city by assailing Soren on a point of etiquette, assured us that we had the institutions on the defensive.

*Congressional Victory Signals Continued Momentum*

While the events of September 11 have interrupted, at least in the U.S., the sense of momentum the movement for global justice had established with street protests around the world, there is every reason to think that in the institutions themselves, in the op-ed pages, and in the legislatures of the world, our message has penetrated sufficiently that we will not be thrown backward.

The first concrete indication that the spirit of unity that has made headlines will not be extended to the IMF and the World Bank came on Friday, September 21. The U.S. House Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy met that day and approved by a wide margin legislation that would demand of the regional development banks ­ surrogates and mirror-images of the World Bank ­ that they release far more information, on an earlier timetable and to a wider audience, than what the World Bank had announced earlier in the month would be its new practice on information disclosure.

While Congress alone cannot change the rules of the banks, and while this bill is not yet law, it is clear that the move has bipartisan support in the U.S., and that there is substantial backing for meaningful change at the institutions. But even beyond those requirements, the bill also demands that the institutions open their Board meetings to the media and public observation ­ a demand hardly anyone dared to voice even a year ago. These provisions clearly put the World Bank on notice that similar demands could, and probably will, be made of them when it next requests funds from the U.S.

The same legislation also took the important step of building on our victory last year in passing legislation requiring the U.S. to oppose "user fees" ­ financial charges ­ from the most impoverished people in the most impoverished countries for the most basic services, such as primary health care and primary education. The Treasury Department had opened a loophole in last year’s legislation to avoid implementing the provision; a bipartisan Congressional coalition came together to repair the wording.

Finally, an amendment proposed by Rep. Barbara Lee (who gained recent fame as the lone member of Congress to oppose President Bush’s request for a "blank check" authorization of military force, to require the U.S. to oppose projects at the regional development banks which include any dam not adhering to the recommendations made by the World Commission on Dams, a blue-ribbon panel formed in part by the World Bank and including corporate executives. The Commission made surprisingly strong, far-reaching suggestions about curtailing large dams and building them only under very specific conditions. After the unveiling of its report, the World Bank announced it would not abide by the Commission’s findings. Rep. Lee’s amendment passed, but not before being "watered down" somewhat. Despite the changes, the resulting legislation, if it becomes law, would be an unprecedented restriction on development loans for environmental reasons. This provision, too, is a significant warning sign for the World Bank.

*Final Thoughts . . .*

Through all the organizing for the September mobilization and all the agony and turmoil of the September 11 attacks, we have tried to bear in mind at all times the need to stay the course. We know that children are dying of preventable and curable diseases at a pace hardly any different from when UNICEF estimated 19,000 such deaths every day. We know that environmental devastation grows daily in the service of quick profits for corporations. We know that debt servicing and the austerity programs it inspires continue to deny millions basic services, sustainable livelihoods, basic labor rights, and dignity.

We know, finally, that the commitment to, the thirst for, global justice has not been quenched, in the U.S. or anywhere else. Indeed, people in the U.S. can now more readily see the meaning and value of true solidarity. Just as people around the world have offered those in the U.S. their unreserved solidarity — despite all the harm done by the U.S. government and corporations — so, in turn, we believe that the extension of solidarity to others by people in the U.S. should become easier. Feeling more vulnerable than ever, people in the U.S., particularly those in the more privileged classes, may see more deeply into what a life without security is like. We in the U.S. can, and must, expand our capacity to see people not as reflections of particular governments or as demographic statistics, but as individuals. We have new opportunities to look honestly at the injustice of the global economy, how we are implicated, and what we can do to make this world less unjust and less insane. U.S. activists too can now take the time to examine where they fit in the global movement for economic justice. Our role may for a time be less to attract the spotlight and more to support the movement in other countries, particularly the activists of the Global South. The movement for global justice that has been gaining momentum through protests, lobbying, and grassroots organizing did not die on September 11. It opened a new chapter, and one we will have to work hard to write, so that the moment’s potential for progress is not sacrificed as the heat of war, of violence, threatens us all.

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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Neil Watkins World Bank Bonds Boycott Center for Economic Justice 1830 Connecticut Ave., NW, 4th floor, Washington, DC 20009 Tel: (202) 299-0020 / Fax: (202) 299-0021 Web: www.worldbankboycott.org

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A Call for Global Solidarity Against Global War
September 17, 2001
Violence Against Women in War Network, Japan (VAWW-Net)

We demand:
1. The United States government should call off the preparation for the retaliation war against the international terrorist attack.

2. The Japanese government should not cooperate with the United States military policy.

3. The United Nations should establish International Criminal Tribunal to prosecute and punish the perpetrators of the terrorist attack.

4. The racist attacks against Arab people should be stopped.

5. A just and co-existence world should be created in order to eliminate the root causes of terrorism.

We, VAWW-NET Japan and our friends have addressed the issue of Japan's war crime committed in the 20th century. Our objective is to create a violence-free 21st century. We are deeply shocked at the terrorist attack that occurred in the first year of the new century, and we are frightened by the United States government call for the retaliation war.

We express our profound condolence for thousands of loss of lives and share grief of those who have lost their loved ones. This attack may be an unprecedented tragedy in American history in which so many Americans perished in a single day. What the tragedy implies, however, is that security policy of the world's largest military might did not protect their citizens. The center of its economy and the military power were so vulnerably destroyed. Yet, even before the perpetrators are identified, President Bush called it "acts of war", and announced the military attack in revenge and vowed the United States will win this war of "good versus evil", and "civilization versus barbarism". We express our uncompromising rejection to the retribution by force.

This terrorist attack is an international crime, not a war. This carnage is a crime against humanity. The crime needs to be brought to justice at the International Criminal Tribunal which the United Nations should establish: the perpetrators and the accomplices need to be prosecuted and punished through due process according to international law. However, President Bush declared that the United States and its allies would destroy not only terrorist groups but also the states which aid and harbor the terrorist groups, ignoring the role of the UN. A budget of 40 billion dollars is now allocated for the military strategy. Isn't this act of President Bush a violation of international law? It is a renunciation of democracy and the rule of law -- the very pride of the United States. We oppose to this belief of the United States leaders -- violence against violence. Violence does not eradicate terrorism. Violence only produces more violence. The history has proven it. Peaceful means is the only way to end the cycle of violence.

The United States media fans the emotion of the public towards the direction of the Third World War as the public opinion overwhelmingly supports the use of force. We wonder whether the United States citizens who support the retaliation ever thought of the reasons why they were targeted. The victims of this tragedy are the victims of the mistaken foreign policies of their own government. The victims include a number of people from other nations. We recall the millions of death of not only other Asian people, but also of Japanese citizens caused in the Japanese war of aggression in the last century.

People of the world remember that the United States has killed thousands of thousands more people in the world -- in Vietnam War, in the Gulf War, by aiding the dictatorships in South America and in Asia, by bombing Sudan and former Yugoslavia, and in supporting Israeli government who continues occupation of the land of Palestine. In the present time, it is the United States which propels globalization that has caused enormous economic disparities between wealthy and poor nations, environmental destruction, and armed conflicts. The Unites States government rejects international cooperation on such issues as global warming, nuclear non-proliferation, establishing International Criminal Court, and the UN World Conference against Racism. Peoples in the world feel outrage and even hatred against the United States. We also recall the United States itself has provided terrorist groups with weapons. These are the causes of this terrorist attack. Without addressing these root causes, terrorist attacks would never be eliminated. It would remain "the weapon of the weak".

A woman from an Asian nation has written to us: "I wonder if Americans know how devastating a war is." She suffered the war waged in her own land. If one feels raged at the loss of thousands of Americans, would not she/he think of the possible loss of lives of women and children in such nations as Afghanistan? Those people would be killed in the war that the United States is about to initiate. Should not these deaths be prevented? The military attack against Afghanistan will certainly cause more deaths among 4 million people who have already suffered from hunger caused by the United States economic sanction. We are also concerned about violence against women in the case when the ground troops are deployed.

As Americans were plunged into sorrow, these people would experience the same. Is it true that the victims of the terrorist attack would want such cruel revenge? Is it true that their soul may rest in peace by another tragedy? We do not believe that hatred nationalism is what they want. The lives in the non-Western world need to be protected as much as the lives in the Western world need to be protected. This belief lies in the heart of democracy and in the principle of human rights -- the "civilization" that the United States values.

We have heard that people of Arabic origins in the Unites States are now facing vicious racist violence. We demand such violence be stopped immediately. At the same time, we are encouraged by receiving "other voices", many statements against war from United States citizens of conscience. We want to act in solidarity with those who courageously pursue peace in the midst of patriotic warlike chauvinism.

NATO nations' support of the United States military attack is, we perceive, an expression of repressive means against peoples in the South such as Muslims. The NATO support of the United States government is a refusal of the reflection on their past of imposing colonialism. It denies the efforts to reform unjust North-South inequality that exists today. We hope civil society in the West take action for peace, not the use of force.

As Japanese citizens, we are deeply concerned about the Japanese government's support of the United States government. The Koizumi administration already decided to modify the Self Defense Forces Law in order to protect the United States military bases located in Japan. It already talks about establishing the emergency preparation system and deployment of Self Defense Forces to keep public order. Right wing nationalists abuse this tragedy to implement the Guidelines for US-Japan Defense Cooperation system to cooperate the United States military action. This is a major step to turning Japan into a nation capable of waging war. We are apprehensive that violence against women may worsen in Okinawa where the United States military bases are heavily located and the function of which will be intensified. We, again, express our strongest rejection to proceeding the road to militarization and to cooperating war. We shall not cooperate any military action to kill. We steadfastly stand for the principle of our peace constitution.

We must prevent a global war by any means. It will be a global war of the"North" ? the United States, Europe and Japan ? against the "South."These nations of the "North" have promoted globalization that have caused arising of fundamentalism and nationalism world wide. People in the "South" especially suffer from these effects of globalization, and they resist globalization. We appeal to citizens of the world including United States citizens of conscience to unite and oppose the globalization of war by our "globalization" of solidarity. Our deep belief firmly stands in the philosophy of non-violence that denies all forms of violence. We ask women all over the world to work together to create a 21st century of peace, not to repeat the century of war.

Yayori Matsui Chairperson of VAWW-NET Japan

Please sign and return to VAWW-NET Japan
fax: +81 3 5337 4088
e-mail: vaww-net-japan@jca.apc.org

Petition form you can get at VAWW-NET Japan Web-site.
Japanese: www1.jca.apc.org/fem/lookout/NoViolence/NoWarPetition.html
English: www1.jca.apc.org/fem/lookout/NoViolence/NoWarPetition-e.html

Viewpoints from the International Law.

September 19, 2001
Hisatake Kato

In terms of international law, there is no legitimacy for wars of retaliation against the recent terrorist attacks.

1. A conflict becomes recognized as a "war" from the perspective of international law not simply when military actions are taken, but when a sovereign state or a guerrilla group expresses its intention to wage a war. Therefore, the recent terrorist attacks would be recognized as crimes, not as a war. Thus, the recent incidents should be treated as crimes.

2. International law makes it clear that efforts for peaceful resolution should be made first to deal with any disputes. Since President Bush has not demonstrated efforts to resolve any possibility of future occurrences of the terrorist attacks in peaceful way, new military actions are not legitimate.

3. International law does not recognize the legitimacy of wars of retaliation. Therefore, even if the terrorist attack this time signifies a beginning of a war, retaliation cannot be allowed unless the terrorists continue their attacks.

4. In order for a war of retaliation against the recent terrorist attacks to be recognized as legitimately exercising the right of self-defense, it must be waged against existing and obvious illegal actions.

Preventive self-defense is not accepted by either international war or domestic law. Therefore, a war of retaliation against the terrorist attacks is not accepted as a legitimate act of self-defense.

5. The principles of international law state that there is no obligation for one state to hand over criminals to another state unless an agreement to do so has been concluded between the two states.

President Bush's argument that military force will be used if the criminals are not handed over is itself in violation of international law.

For the reasons stated above, I conclude that a war of retaliation against the terrorist attacks is not legitimate under international law.

September 19, 2001 Hisatake Kato, Dean of Tottori University of Environmental Studies E-mail: kato@kankyo-u.ac.jp

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