Anti-G8/Railroad Workers Union Doro-Chiba Protesters Denounce Tokyo Police Ban Of 6/29 Demonstration

June 27 2008

On June 27 the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Commission decided to ban the demonstration in front of Shibuya station planned on June 29 as a part of Anti-G8 Summit Workers’ National Rally against war, poverty, unemployment and privatization. (The application of the demonstration with a course passing in front of Shibuya railway station (downtown Tokyo) had been filed by the Organizing Committee of the Anti-G8 Summit Rally to the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Commission.) This ban is an impermissible brutal crackdown by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department on the movement to oppose the G8 Summit.

The Organizing Committee of the Anti-G8 Summit Rally denounce this outrageous measure and declare our firm determination to carry out the demonstration as was planned in front of Shibuya station in defiance of the police ban.

The streets running in front of Shibuya station are usually open for marches and demonstrations of every kind and are regarded as the most popular course. The only reason given by the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Committee to ban the demonstration is that it could provoke disturbance. We shall never admit the right of workers to demonstrate to be regulated and infringed in such way.

What is the background of the extraordinary suppression on demonstration by the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Committee? A huge number of angry workers are rising up not only in Japan but also in the whole world against poverty, disparity, privatization, irregular employment and soaring prices of food and fuel, all brought about by the neo-liberal policy. Mounting anger is going to burst out on the occasion of the G8 Summit at Lake Toya where political promoters of neo-liberalism gather. The G8 Summit has become a target of growing indignation of workers, farmers and also fishermen all over the world.

This is why the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has been repeating crackdowns on the movement against the G8 Summit, as was shown by the recent arrest of 38 students of Hosei university, and has now escalated the repression as far as banning demonstration contrary to the usual cases. Behind the façade of a democratic state, Japan has thus been transformed into an apparent police state. What is evidently exposed by this extraordinary measure of banning a demonstration is that the capitalist state power is scared of mounting anger and developing struggle of working class.

We call out to young workers who are furious at disparity and poverty! We call out to all members of working class who are bitterly suffering under menace of dismissal, low wage and irregularization! We call out to students who are outraged facing difficulty in getting job! We call out also to farmers and fishermen in hardship!

Let’s unite now! Join us in the Anti-G8 Summit Workers’ National Rally on June 29!

Let’s stage an angry demonstration together!

The National Committee for Organizing the Rally of June 29 Against G8 Summit

The Rally was initially called for by the National Railway Motive Power Union of Chiba. (Doro-Chiba / doro-chiba@doro-chiba.org)