International Solidarity of Workers Can Stop War on Korean Peninsula!
Overthrow warmongers Trump and Abe with angry workers uprising all over the world!
Workers all over the world!
A fresh war—a nuclear war—is imminent. Subsequent to the war in the Middle East, now a war on Korean Peninsula is about to break out. If a war erupts, the whole East Asia would become embroiled in an awfully devastating and bloody battlefield.
The US Trump administration and the Japanese Abe administration have taken us to the brink of nuclear war. Since the division of Korean Peninsula into North and South after World War II against the will of Korean people, the US and Japan governments have been consistently hostile to North Korea and increasing military pressure on it even after the Korean War (1950~53). The US-Japan military alliance continues to make threats even by holding “beheading operation” and “nuclear first strike” over the Kim Jong-un regime, which, in its turn, is driving it to the last extremity to arm with nuclear weapons.
To confront this serious situation, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) of South Korea issued a statement: “A nuclear showdown is not only a catastrophe for all people in both North and South but means an existential cataclysm for humankind that would spread into every corner of the world. We can never allow it to happen.” The KCTU strongly urges to rise up immediately with full force to “thoroughly get rid of the dark clouds of war looming over the Korean Peninsula and release North and South Korea from the long-years’ constraint of division.”
Being scared by the impact of global economic crisis and Japan’s economic ruin, the Abe administration is trying to find the only way of survival in large expansion of armament and militarization of economy (dependence on war industry), revising the Constitution that would again enable Japan to launch an aggressive war in Asia. That is why Abe overtly denies the past war crimes including the comfort women issue, as if nothing had ever happened.
Whatever the reason the Japanese government would put up, we should never allow it to embark in a war again on the Korean Peninsula and East Asia. This is the mission for us Japanese working class to be carried out resolutely.
We declare our unity with the KCTU appeal, and are firmly determined in front of the workers all over the world that Japanese working class will overthrow the Abe administration and Japanese imperialism with our own hands.
The assaults of neoliberalism, which cares money than lives, has forcibly led to a rapid increase of massive unemployment, poverty, casualization and “karoshi” (death from overwork), and resulted in the collapse of whole social system such as education and medical care. Now, the violent practice of these onslaughts has gone far beyond the limit. Workers’ revolts for pursuing radical transformation of society have begun to spread all over the world. In the forefront, the struggle of South Korean working people has overthrown Park Geun-hye government.
Summit talks between Trump and Abe to be held in Tokyo in November will give go-ahead to aggressive war on the Korean Peninsula. On November 5th, we will hold the annual international workers’ solidarity rally and demonstration in Tokyo together with participants from abroad to crush the Japan-U.S. summit talks for war.
With the workers of Japan, Korea and the United States at the forefront, let’s stop the war before it starts by the strength of international solidarity and unity of workers of the whole world!
September 27th, 2017
Yasuhiro TANAKA, President of National Railway Motive Power Union of Chiba (Doro-Chiba)
Hiroyuki YAMAMOTO, General Secretary of Doro-Chiba International Labor Solidarity Committee
