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It was 1983 when a group of university friends began the project Peace Boat – a floating peace village. Twenty-five years later, Peace Boat is a recognised Japan-based, international NGO that works to promote peace and sustainability through the organisation of global voyages onboard a large passenger ship. Each voyage takes up to 1000 people from all walks of life for three months calling to an average of twenty countries. On board, participants attend various peace education programs such as the Global University and while in ports, we interact with the local people to share cultural exchange programs and joint cooperation activities. These activities are carried out on a partnership basis with other civil society organisations and communities around the world.
Our original motivation was the controversy over the revision of history textbooks in Japan in the early 1980s. As university students at the time, we all felt a great sense of crisis due to the misleading historical texts about the Japanese army’s invasions throughout the Asia-Pacific region and Japan’s actions during World War II. Those of us standing on the side of the historical perpetrators of violence prefer to forget about these truths, and a decisive gap in historical recognition develops between us and those standing on the other side of history – those whose lands were invaded and will never be able to forget the violence. In our 152view, this would render eventual reconciliation and the establishment of true friendly relations impossible.
With the slogan of ‘reflect upon past wars, create peace for the future’, we chartered a passenger ship, gathered several hundred students and citizens and started to run peace voyages throughout the Asia-Pacific region once or twice a year, for between two and three weeks at a time. On board these voyages were also NGO activists and specialists on peace, human rights and environmental issues from both Japan and the country visited. The main purpose of these voyages was to consider past conflicts and work towards reconciliation for the Asia-Pacific region through the creation of new relationships. These voyages became the organisation we now call Peace Boat.
In the early days, we spent a large proportion of time visiting places which had been invaded by the Japanese army. For example, we visited the site of the Nanjing Massacre in China; places where many Australian and British prisoners of war lost their lives such as the sites of the Thai-Burma Railway and the Death March of the Philippines’ Bataan Peninsula and Sakhalin where many Koreans were abandoned.
However, this focus on the past developed into a concern about contemporary international issues of the 1980s. We began to work also on educating for the peace and justice issues surrounding the Vietnam War; massacres under the Pol Pot Regime; the Sino-Vietnamese War; and other conflicts in Asia, including the Cold War as it was experienced in the region. Furthermore, we became involved in the independence movement of Timor L’este, a regional neighbour also invaded at one time by the Japanese army.
Peace Boat’s third voyage in 1985 visited Vietnam for the first time – a country then under the Cold War socialist system. Two days after departing from Ho Chi Minh City after having enjoyed exchange with local youth, the ship came across a boat carrying over twenty refugees who had fled from Vietnam, only to have their boat’s engine fail and to have been floating without food and water for over two weeks. Meeting these people risking their lives to escape from the very Vietnam 153which had so warmly welcomed Peace Boat just two days earlier was a great shock – where was the ‘liberation’ and ‘socialism’ we had heard so much about? To add to that question, the voyage also visited Manila, then in the midst of the Marcos dictatorship. Although hearing about the freedom of capitalism in the Philippines, Peace Boat participants came face-to-face with people living as garbage collectors at Smokey Mountain. Seeing these radically different situations in two South-East Asian nations opened our eyes to the fact that North-South issues were even more serious than the East-West issues of the Cold War – namely, the gaps between the wealthy and the poor. Poverty was a peace issue too. We came to realise that just as the North-South issue can be seen in Japan and South-East Asia, it is also a problem of North, Central and South America; of Europe and Africa and the Middle East. Similar North-South structures exist all over the world. Without linking these different places, we will not be able to see the fundamental core of peace with justice problems.
These experiences in Asia in the mid-1980s, the subsequent democracy movement in Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War, the violence at Tiananmen Square and the collapse of the Soviet Union were decisive influences on the evolution of Peace Boat. These major conflicts made us re-acknowledge that issues in the Asia-Pacific cannot be resolved only within this region. Furthermore, the collapse of the East-West Cold War structures underscored the North-South divide, leading to the recognition that resolution of conflicts regarding human security would only be possible through global actions.
The Global Summit held in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro in 1992 also had a great influence on the Peace Boat’s agenda. The issue of the global environment and sustainable development as a key human security concern was acknowledged by the international community. Since its beginnings, Peace Boat has acknowledged the significance of environmental issues, which are inherently important to realising peace for the world. For example, in Vietnam we learned about the lingering effects of Agent Orange and other defoliants and in Borneo we conducted studies on the destruction of the rainforest.
Thus, it was a natural progression for us to begin global voyages in 1990. Since then, Peace Boat has circumnavigated the globe over fifty 154times. From visits to Eastern Europe in the early stages of democracy and Russia in the days after the collapse of the Soviet Union, to direct association with conflict regions including Palestine and Israel; Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia; Cyprus; Northern Ireland; the Basque region; Eritrea, Algeria and Mozambique in Africa; and Nicaragua, El Salvador and Colombia in Latin America, we have been able to deepen direct exchange with the local communities and members of local NGOs, creating dialogue for a peaceful, sustainable, global society.
Peace Boat’s Global University program is held on board the three-month voyages at sea. The comprehensive peace education program that forms Global University includes workshops and seminars held by a wide range of specialists and activists from around the world, field work and exposure tours to visit the actual places studied while in port, and direct networking and campaigning activities on board the ship and beyond. The Global University combines theory and practice of nonviolence via study, experience, networking and action, to create a ‘peace university’ while living in this ‘floating peace village’.
A particularly unique aspect of this program is that Peace Boat itself is a community – which I refer to as a ‘village’. Throughout the relatively long three-month semester onboard, students share their living space with teachers, resource persons, instructors and the broader onboard community. The development of these personal relationships underpins the educational pedagogy inherently built into the study environment itself; that is, ‘coexisting with others’ as one of the most important aspects to the realisation of peace.
Educating for peace includes enabling safe, creative spaces to engage cross-cultural learning, often between conflicting parties. Peace Boat voyages are a moving space which can link people throughout the world. For example, a representative of a Peruvian NGO supporting people living in slums joined the ship to visit El Salvador; there he learned about building cost-effective eco-toilets with natural materials and, upon his return to Peru, was able to use this idea to improve hygiene in the slums. 155A women’s peace conference planned by a group of Colombian women from all strata of society, which could not be held in the country itself due to the ongoing conflict, was held onboard the ship as a neutral, safe space for dialogue. Through direct exchange in ports and international solidarity actions, Peace Boat is able to create a physical and real space for networking that transcends national borders.
This is embodied in the International Students Programme, through which we invite youth from regions in conflict to join the ship. The project aims to empower its participants to seek peaceful dialogues to the conflicts in which their communities and countries are involved. Over the years, students from Palestine and Israel, the former Yugoslavia, India and Pakistan, the US, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Eritrea, Turkey and Greece, and the East-Asian nations of Korea, China and Taiwan have all joined the ship and participated in these conflict transformation programs, ranging from a week to a full three-month global voyage.
The program has had a significant impact on the lives of participants, for example that of a young Palestinian and a young Israeli who, having struggled to resolve their differences and build trust through their experiences on board, went on to initiate a joint project to build peace once they returned to their homes. In October of 2003, their joint initiative was recognised for its achievements in bringing young Israelis and Palestinians together for dialogue and was awarded the Mount Zion Award from a Jerusalem foundation. Additionally, despite the tremendous obstacles posed by the ongoing Israeli Occupation and the deteriorating situation on the ground in Palestine, the two have continued to cooperate and have travelled to Japan on a national speaking tour to raise awareness about peace with justice concerns in the Middle East.
Korea, as Japan’s closest neighbour, and also arguably its biggest colonial victim, has always had a special focus in our activities. This is particularly because Peace Boat’s founding members were active participants in the Korean Democracy solidarity movement as students.
Even now, more than sixty years after the end of World War II, there are deep tensions between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. These tensions 156are rooted in various unresolved issues, such as political relations between Japan and the North of the Korean peninsula, which remain an open wound. Indeed, I believe that North-East Asia is still dangerously fractured along Cold War lines, and the effects of this frigid relationship on security, the economy and civil society cannot be overlooked as East Asia works towards consolidating and building closer international relations. It is imperative that people take action at the grassroots level to try to build cooperation and trust based on mutual respect and understanding.
Peace Boat has organised numerous regional voyages to the Korean peninsula, including two historic cruises that visited both sides of the divided peninsula within the same voyage. On each visit to the north of the peninsula, we have engaged in reconciliation and dialogue activities with groups including students, former forced labourers and Korean victims of the atomic bombing of Japan.
As our region is traditionally weak in respect for civil society activity, these programs have benefited tremendously from the example set by South Korean civil society. Peace Boat has certainly learned a great deal from our partners in Seoul. We have thus been delighted to forge a partnership with South Korea’s ‘Green Foundation’, a project through which we are jointly launching a ship on a regional voyage for peace every year for ten years. The first of such ‘Peace and Green Boats’, Peace Boat’s fiftieth Voyage for Peace, was entitled ‘Peace and Green in Asia – Towards A Common Vision of the Future for East Asia’. The 2005 voyage marked the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II and the fortieth anniversary of the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan.
The experience of coordinating a voyage with responsibility shared equally between Korea and Japan has proved to be a powerful catalyst for dialogue and cooperation, and has led to moving person-to-person links between the people of the two countries, which despite being so close geographically, are still far apart. The ‘Peace and Green Boat’ project is a concrete step by civil society to strengthen peaceful relations in East Asia. 157
Entering the twenty-first century, we were struck with a huge shock – the September 11 attacks and the following wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Particularly significant was the Iraq War, in which the governments of the United Kingdom and Japan amongst others supported the Bush administration in its neglect of both international law and the international community to wage war. Here, the Peace Boat provided a unique space for nonviolent action as we used it as a moving billboard to actively protest against the war, and also as a vehicle to transport wheelchairs, beds and medical supplies to a hospital in Iraq. The realities of the Iraq War have also made clear to us – in a cruel and horrific way – the urgent need for stronger global networks to build peace.
With this in mind, Peace Boat became involved in a new undertaking, as a member of the International Steering Group of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC). This global partnership was established as a response to former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan’s call in his 2001 Conflict Prevention Report for “NGOs with an interest in conflict prevention to organise an international conference of local, national and international NGOs on their role in conflict prevention and future interaction with the United Nations in this field.” Peace Boat also became the Regional Secretariat for GPPAC in North-East Asia, a role we continue to this day. Through making the most effective use of the expansive human networks nurtured through our Global Voyages, we have been able to make contributions towards promoting GPPAC objectives for conflict prevention and peacebuilding activities.
In 2005, the GPPAC Global Conference was held at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Over 2000 conflict prevention and peacebuilding specialists, NGO activists and representatives of international organisations and governments gathered at this meeting, taking part in concrete discussions on a wide range of themes including peace constitutions and nuclear abolition. At its conclusion, the GPPAC Global Agenda was adopted, in which the concept of ‘countries without armies’ – as upheld in the Constitutions of Japan and Costa Rica, for example – were recognised as effective mechanisms for conflict prevention, such 158as playing “an important role in promoting regional stability and increasing confidence.” The same document recognised that Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution – which renounces war as a means of settling disputes and maintaining forces for those purposes – “has been a foundation for collective security throughout the Asia-Pacific region.”
Following this, Peace Boat has continued to work within the GPPAC framework, collaborating with NGOs throughout the Northeast Asian region to undertake sustained activities advocating a new, peaceful form of regional security. A particular focus of these efforts has been collaboration with Korean NGOs to hold regional conferences engaging both South and North Korea and activities for the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, including joint coordination of a series of critically important ‘Civil Society Six-Party Talks’.
‘Historical Recognition and History Education’ are also a significant focus of Peace Boat’s reconciliation activities. For example, Peace Boat has participated in the process of trilateral dialogue in this field between Japanese, Chinese and Korean organisations, as well as utilising our networks throughout Europe to build cooperation between Asian academics and activists creating trilateral joint history textbooks, most notably with Germany’s Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research.
A further concrete product of Peace Boat’s involvement in the GPPAC network is the Global Article 9 Campaign to Abolish War, mentioned earlier in this book in chapter 8. Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution renounces war as a means of settling international disputes and prohibits the maintenance of armed forces and other war potential. Yet the Japanese government has been moving towards amending Article 9, partly due to the US demand for fully-fledged military support from Japan in its ‘war on terror’. Despite the restrictions of Article 9, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces have gradually expanded over the past few years, bringing Japan’s military expenditure to one of the highest in the world.
In 2005, Peace Boat, together with the Japan Lawyers’ International Solidarity Association (JALISA), launched the Global Article 9 Campaign 159to Abolish War. This campaign strives not only to protect Article 9 locally, but also to build an international movement supporting Article 9 as the shared property of the world, calling for a global peace that does not rely on force.
Indeed, Article 9 is not just a provision of the Japanese law; it also acts as an international peace mechanism towards reductions in military spending, promotion of nuclear-weapon-free zones, ending violence against women, supporting conflict prevention, and mitigating the negative environmental impacts of military processes. International civil society organisations have recognised the global impact of Article 9, including its relevance in regards to human rights, disarmament, nuclear weapons abolition, conflict prevention, development, the environment, globalisation, UN reform and other global issues. Through this campaign, a strong international network has formed, from members of the anti-war movements in the US and elsewhere; to organizations working for peace in Africa or the Middle East; NGOs lobbying for disarmament in Europe; and women’s groups acting worldwide.
As a major part of this campaign, the large scale ‘Global Article 9 Conference to Abolish War’ was held in Japan from 4–6 May 2008. With the participation of Nobel Peace Laureates, intellectuals, cultural figures and NGO activists from over forty countries, this historic three-day conference attracted over 33,000 participants nationwide to join dialogue on the role that citizens of the world can play to realise the principles of Article 9, through promoting disarmament, demilitarisation and a culture of peace.
In a world where the chain of violence and war continues unbroken and militarisation is gathering speed, the existence of Japan’s Article 9 provides encouragement to those who work towards a peace that does not rely on force. Article 9 gives hope – hope that another world is possible. The Article 9 Campaign demonstrates the active value of Article 9 and proposes ways to realise its potential.
A great milestone for Peace Boat 2008 was marking the project’s twenty-fifth anniversary. As well as hosting the Global Article 9 Conference to 160Abolish War, Peace Boat also undertook another new project to share the importance of nonviolence with both its participants on board and people encountered throughout the global journeys.
On the sixty-third Global Voyage for Peace, 103 Hibakusha (Atomic Bomb Survivors) of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were invited to join the four-month global journey to share their testimonies of the experience of the atomic bomb with people around the world. Taking place between 7 September 2008 and 13 January 2009, the group visited a total of twenty-three ports in twenty countries, connecting Hibakusha with citizens, NGOs and youth throughout the world, and hoping to add a new breath of life to the global network of citizens working for peace and nuclear abolition.
This project presents an opportunity to reconsider the realities of nuclear weapons together with people from many countries, and to build a foundation of global civil society action towards the abolition of nuclear weapons. The universal message of nuclear disarmament in the voices of Hibakusha was offered to the world. Yet their voices remain marginalised, and the time remaining to hear directly from the Hibakusha is sadly becoming more and more limited.
This historic voyage provided a unique chance to pass along the stories and memories of the Hibakusha, their sufferings and hopes for a nuclear free future. Through direct interaction with youth, citizens, NGOs and victims of wars from other parts of the world, the 103 Hibakusha (from Japan, Korea, Australia, Brazil, Canada and Mexico) acted not only as peace and disarmament educators in raising awareness on the dangers of nuclear weapons and the human costs of war, but also loudly added their voices to the call to abolish all nuclear weapons and create an alternative vision for peace and global stability that does not rely on force or deterrence.
In addition to filming a documentary of the Hibakushas’ testimonies and experiences on board (currently in production), public events were held in all ports visited around the world, and interactive programs with local civil society organisations and governmental disarmament officials were organised. For example, during the ship’s visit to Sydney in December 2008, the Hibakusha met with local students, Indigenous 161Australians victimised by uranium mining, anti-nuclear and environmental activists, politicians and members of the public. They also presented a letter to a representative of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, in regards to the Australia-Japan initiated International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) established in 2008.
Other activities included a visit by a delegation of Hibakusha to the United Nations headquarters in New York where they gave a presentation to the First Committee at the UN General Assembly’s sixty-third session, and the Hibakusha’s call succeeding in twenty-seven cities in four countries (Eritrea, Turkey, Spain, Venezuela) joining the Mayors for Peace Initiative.
Furthermore, the Hibakusha were able to strengthen solidarity with other nuclear victims and war survivors throughout the world, including victims of nuclear testing in Tahiti and uranium mining in Australia. The voyage also acted to revitalise the Hibakusha movement itself. Amongst the participants were Hibakusha who had never before told their stories to others, let alone in public, who shared their experiences for the first time. ‘Young Hibakusha’, infants or young children in 1945, who have no direct recollection of the atomic bombing were also involved. Furthermore, the project featured great collaboration between youth and Hibakusha, both amongst the 700 participants on board the Peace Boat itself, and also within the places visited around the world. The second Peace Boat Hibakusha Project will be held on board the sixty-seventh Global Voyage, taking place from 8 August–22 November 2009.
Peace Boat’s strength is in the special potential of its unique space: floating at sea and transcending borders, it brings people away from the pressures of their everyday lives and at the same time to a point where they can see the complexity and humanity of our world in sharp relief. That is, they see peace in all its dimensions – economic, social, political and environmental – and understand that this view of promoting peace with justice begins with increasing our literacy about nonviolence as the key to a thriving humanity. 162
In this era in which our world appears to be getting ever smaller, with the Internet and Skype communications making contact with people from across the planet easier and cheaper, there is less reliance on meeting people face-to-face or being able to grasp their hand whilst sharing experiences. It is this kind of contact that enables the growth of deep solidarity. As the threats posed by environmental degradation and climate change begin to have an increasingly severe impact on the lives of people in many parts of the world, it will be essential to understand the grassroots effect of our choices on other people’s lives.
As the New York Times famously wrote on the occasion of the February 2003 Anti-Iraqi War demonstrations, “there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.” Four years later, I was in the offices of the European Union in Brussels and a top-level official confided in me, whilst speaking of Baghdad, that “the world’s largest army cannot even keep order in a medium-sized city”. Traditional means of organising the world order are no longer acceptable, or even feasible. This century is the century of global civil society.
Peace Boat has a significant part to play in this developing global society and must continue to expand its role in bringing people together and supporting global citizenship. In fact, I have a dream … of being able to open up the ship in a manner that will truly go beyond borders: political borders, social borders, economic borders, and corporate borders. I dream of a ‘Peace Boat Passport’, through which we guarantee and protect the work of our nonviolence practitioners and, in our shared solidarity, are able to work in equality and without encumbrances across the borders of nationality. The Peace Boat project is a single example and a relatively small-scale project, with ambitious goals and significant challenges in thinking about regional and global governance, the limits of nation states, and our duty as citizens of the world to struggle together for a peaceful and sustainable planet.