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The Japanese Trade Union Confederation (JTUC-RENGO) will hold its 79th May Day Central Rally at Yoyogi Park in Tokyo, Japan on April 26, 2008. Over 60 NGOs/non-profits take part in the celebration, which is held under the slogans: "Solidarity Among All Workers — creating a welfare state and a free and peaceful world through striving together for peace, human rights, worker’s welfare and the environment," and "Stop the social disparities!" IMADR will be setting up a booth again this year (Booth No. 15), so please drop by!

IMADR has launched an emergency appeal to raise funds to support IMADR-AC’s activities to assist Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Sri Lanka’s north and east.

Background
In February 2002, after nearly 20 years of civil war, the people of Sri Lanka came close to achieving peace with the signing of a ceasefire agreement between the Singhalese-majority government and Tamil Tiger rebels. Following the election of a new hard-line president, however, the country has once again slid to the brink of civil war. Fresh negotiations were conducted in February and October 2006, but since April 2006, we have observed the abandonment of the peace agreements and the recommencement of war, with air raids, gun battles and indiscriminate attacks by both sides. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), over 200,000 people have been internally displaced since April 2006, and 15,000 people have fled to Tamil Nadu, India.

IMADR’s Asia Committee (IMADR-AC), based in Sri Lanka, has been working with grassroots partners to ensure that minorities are not left out of the peace building process and post-tsunami reconstruction, and to help empower minorities. IMADR-AC has dispatched fact-finding missions to the East several times in the last year, and hopes to supply essential items such as powdered milk, medicine and dry rations to the camps located in the reachable areas. In Trincomalee, a request has been made for schoolbooks, stationery and clothes for the children. In Batticaloa, there is an urgent need for powdered milk, towels, underwear, sanitary napkins, basins and mats. IMADR-AC requests your help in helping provide basic necessities for those displaced by the Sri Lankan conflict.

The International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism
(IMADR)

Exploitative migration caused by neo-liberal globalization
Nowadays, neo-liberal globalization tends to be increasingly feminized and informalized, due to the polarization of the global economy where the rich get richer and the poor poorer. This is one of the root causes of exploitative migration including human trafficking and migrant smuggling.

The international community seems to deal with this problem in two ways. Firstly, the United Nations is strengthening their policies to clamp down on transnational criminal organizations, which are considered major traffickers. Secondly, the UN is trying to set up a Forum for International Migration and Development, based on the recognition that the Millennium Development Goals cannot be achieved unless international migration is made part of sustainable global development.

The clampdown on traffickers and selective immigration policies are not the ultimate solutions
Moreover, our concern is that these initiatives may well worsen, instead of improving, the situation.

Although it is true to a certain extent that arresting and punishing traffickers has positive consequences for victims of trafficking and smuggling, it also works negatively, often making them collateral victims of excessive surveillance and control.

Besides, pursuing international migration for the sake of national economic development, accompanied by the receiving countries’ selective immigration policies, will only benefit skilled labour migration, while aggravating the human insecurity of undocumented migrants.

Thus, the UN’s recent efforts to promote a campaign for “international migration and development,” combined with the War on Terror and on organized crime, may accelerate exploitative migration if not correctly guided by the concerned civil societies. We must prevent the international community from encouraging exploitative migration by increasing restrictions on unskilled labor migration while helping criminal organizations go further underground by a sweeping control of informal sectors.

Forty-four years ago, Kazuo Ishikawa, a man of Buraku origin (a caste-like Japanese minority), was falsely imprisoned for the murder of a schoolgirl. We ask for your help in calling on the Tokyo High Court to deliver justice by granting a retrial of the case. Visit the Sayama Case website to learn about the Sayama Case and Buraku discrimination in Japan.

Last year, the Yoko Tada Foundation for Human Rights awarded Kazuo Ishikawa the 18th Tada Human Rights Prize for his work in the fighting the miscarriage of justice. “We have great respect for Mr. Ishikawa in his 43-year battle,” the award committee said, “We want to show our solidarity with him, in hopes that he will win his third appeal for the retrial and reinvestigation of the Sayama Case and that the false charges against him are dropped.”

To date, over one million people have shown their support for Ishikawa by signing the Sayama Case petition. Please join them! Sign the petition here (external link).