I really felt bad today when I heard that a dead body had been found in Iraq that the Japanese government suspected it was Shosei Koda, the kidnapped Japanese kid. They announced some hours later that it was an Iraqi man killed, and that no one had any news about Koda.
The young man, 24 years old, was kidnapped the other day by a group claiming they are a part of Al-Qaida operating under the command of the legendary Az-Zarqawi in Iraq.
I don’t know much about him, but one of my Japanese friends told me that he went
to New Zealand in January of this year on holiday or something, and
a few months later he came to the Middle East. A Japanese filmmaker who has been in Jordan met him at the hotel in Amman. When he was told the traveller boy would visit Iraq, he says he tried to make him give up. The hotel manager says he did the same. However the boy got on a bus with only 100 bucks and went to Baghdad. He
had planned to stay there for five or six days, just to see what is happening in Iraq. He went to the Casablanca Hotel, but they couldn't take him in. The hotel no longer let foreigners stay, the TV reports. He doesn't do any government job, and he has nothing to do with Japan's Self-Defence Forces. He's just an easy-going, curious backpacker and/or a future volunteer worker.
The other problem that I heard while watching the film his kidnappers released that he was in Israel as his passport shows and this made the matter worse. He will be accused of working as a spy or something now while maybe he just went to Israel to visit the Palestinian territories as other activists do when they come to the middle east, maybe, I’m just guessing here.
I’m not optimistic about his fate. This is the same group that beheaded Bigley and the other two American hostages some weeks ago, the same group that killed the 49 Iraqi soldiers, and the same group the seems to be really extremist and fundamentalist.
I wrote an open letter addressed to the Japanese people some months ago, when the first kidnapping incident happened. And here I am again, six months later, writing another one.
Another open letter to the Japanese People...
I would really like you to know how sad I feel for what is happening in Iraq now, and I would like you to know that ordinary Iraqis cannot do anything to find or release the innocent young Japanese hostages, Mr Koda.
Please know that Iraqis in general have feelings of respect towards Japan, and they look up to the Japanese people who rebuilt their country after the WWII, and after the brutal inhuman nuclear attacks against your civilian population which is one of the worst mass-murders in the history of humanity. Iraqi people believe in the Japanese cultural experience, and try to learn lessons from what you did and what you are doing now.
You must know that I have never met a single Iraqi with feelings of hate or aggression towards the Japanese people, and these kidnappings do not reflect in anyway the feelings of the majority of Iraqis towards the Japanese people, most of us wish that these incidents didn’t happen, and that the relations between our cultures didn’t start by these violent incidents.
Unfortunately, I know that this kidnapping is different than the last Japanese kidnapping experience, and I know how much more complicated and chaotic the situation in Iraq has become in the last six months.
I would like to ask you to put more pressure on your government to pull out your Japanese military Forces from Iraq. Let the Bush administration (or the Kerry administration) handle and solve the problem with the Iraqi people. It is their responsibility. Don’t give the Bush administration a fake international cover to justify their war against Iraq. The presence of your military groups in Iraq is just political; it is just for supporting the American administration’s misguided foreign policy. Supporting the racist “war for the U.S. Empire” is the last thing your peaceful nation wants to do.
Please don’t let your sons and daughters in the military die in Iraq, please don’t let your civilian sons and daughters be killed in Iraq, please don’t start a terrible history of violence and hate between your people and our people by letting your government take a part of this new mass-murder. Don’t help in creating a new Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The young man, 24 years old, was kidnapped the other day by a group claiming they are a part of Al-Qaida operating under the command of the legendary Az-Zarqawi in Iraq.
I don’t know much about him, but one of my Japanese friends told me that he went
to New Zealand in January of this year on holiday or something, and
a few months later he came to the Middle East. A Japanese filmmaker who has been in Jordan met him at the hotel in Amman. When he was told the traveller boy would visit Iraq, he says he tried to make him give up. The hotel manager says he did the same. However the boy got on a bus with only 100 bucks and went to Baghdad. He
had planned to stay there for five or six days, just to see what is happening in Iraq. He went to the Casablanca Hotel, but they couldn't take him in. The hotel no longer let foreigners stay, the TV reports. He doesn't do any government job, and he has nothing to do with Japan's Self-Defence Forces. He's just an easy-going, curious backpacker and/or a future volunteer worker.
The other problem that I heard while watching the film his kidnappers released that he was in Israel as his passport shows and this made the matter worse. He will be accused of working as a spy or something now while maybe he just went to Israel to visit the Palestinian territories as other activists do when they come to the middle east, maybe, I’m just guessing here.
I’m not optimistic about his fate. This is the same group that beheaded Bigley and the other two American hostages some weeks ago, the same group that killed the 49 Iraqi soldiers, and the same group the seems to be really extremist and fundamentalist.
I wrote an open letter addressed to the Japanese people some months ago, when the first kidnapping incident happened. And here I am again, six months later, writing another one.
Another open letter to the Japanese People...
I would really like you to know how sad I feel for what is happening in Iraq now, and I would like you to know that ordinary Iraqis cannot do anything to find or release the innocent young Japanese hostages, Mr Koda.
Please know that Iraqis in general have feelings of respect towards Japan, and they look up to the Japanese people who rebuilt their country after the WWII, and after the brutal inhuman nuclear attacks against your civilian population which is one of the worst mass-murders in the history of humanity. Iraqi people believe in the Japanese cultural experience, and try to learn lessons from what you did and what you are doing now.
You must know that I have never met a single Iraqi with feelings of hate or aggression towards the Japanese people, and these kidnappings do not reflect in anyway the feelings of the majority of Iraqis towards the Japanese people, most of us wish that these incidents didn’t happen, and that the relations between our cultures didn’t start by these violent incidents.
Unfortunately, I know that this kidnapping is different than the last Japanese kidnapping experience, and I know how much more complicated and chaotic the situation in Iraq has become in the last six months.
I would like to ask you to put more pressure on your government to pull out your Japanese military Forces from Iraq. Let the Bush administration (or the Kerry administration) handle and solve the problem with the Iraqi people. It is their responsibility. Don’t give the Bush administration a fake international cover to justify their war against Iraq. The presence of your military groups in Iraq is just political; it is just for supporting the American administration’s misguided foreign policy. Supporting the racist “war for the U.S. Empire” is the last thing your peaceful nation wants to do.
Please don’t let your sons and daughters in the military die in Iraq, please don’t let your civilian sons and daughters be killed in Iraq, please don’t start a terrible history of violence and hate between your people and our people by letting your government take a part of this new mass-murder. Don’t help in creating a new Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
<< Home