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★阿修羅♪
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まだどなたの投稿もないようなので送ります。既出だったらすみません。以下、あるＭＬに送ったテキストをそのまま貼り付けます。手抜きご容赦。
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きっと書いてくれると思ってました、ディビッド・マクニールさん＠東京。反日分子発言やら安田・渡辺会見まで盛り込んだ活きのいい記事ですね。
この記事が日本の「国益」なのか「恥ずかしいこと」なのかについて。文中に
The backlash, almost comic in its ferocity, has been led from the top.
とあるように、恥ずかしいと言うよりも考えられない、想像もつかないことだという見方がたぶんイギリスでは一般的でしょう。また、このとんでもないことが今現在の小泉政権および政権政党内に端を発していることが指摘されているので、７月の参院選の結果しだいで「国益」にもなる可能性があります。つまり、ばかなのは政権政党と内閣であり、国民はばかではないことが証明されればいいわけです。
参院選で先日の補選のような結果が出た場合は、日本がいままでにもまして「特別枠」に入れられそうな気がします。それは、ただ単にアメリカの腰巾着だというだけでなく、前近代的な未開の人々、あるいは異論を認めない全体主義国家といった範疇かと思います。
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新聞の論調はネットだけじゃわからないというのがわたしの持論ですが、日本人人質バッシングの記事は、ただこれが掲載されただけではなくもう少々手厳しい扱いになっています。
記事は国際面に掲載され、多数の日本人記者に取り囲まれる渡辺さんの写真と、親族と弁護士（？）に挟まれてうなだれたまま歩く帰国時の高遠さんの写真が使われています。が、このページにはもうひとつ記事があり、それがイタリアの人質についてのものです。
イタリア人人質の拘束者が、５日以内に大規模なデモを首都で開催しなければ人質の命はないとの要求をイタリアの人々に対して突きつけたのはご存じだと思いますが、この記事は５月１日のメイデーに開催の決まった大規模デモの準備が進んでいることを伝えています。また、３人の人質の家族はこのデモとは別に、今日も明日もデモをする予定で、また野党のメンバーがイラクに駐留する３０００人のイタリア人兵士の帰国を要求するデモを呼びかけているそうです。
ベルルスコーニは、この事態を、マドリードの列車爆破後のスペインと同じような状況であるとし、世論がまっぷたつに分かれようとしていると語っています。けっこう怯えているのかもしれません。開戦前の反戦デモも開戦１周年のデモもローマのはとりわけ大きかったことを思うと、人質の解放後に注目です。（巨大なデモになりそうなので、他の原因がなければ３人の人質は解放されるでしょう。）
というわけで、２つの記事からは、同じ占領軍の一員でありながら、人質の扱いをめぐるイタリアと日本の世論がまったく違う反応をしていることや政府に対する有権者の批判のあるなしがくっきりはっきりという仕組みです。
とほほ。
Japan's hostages tell how they came home to scorn and shame
When five captives were released by Iraqi rebel fighters earlier this month, they did not expect to return home to a nation full of anger. David McNeill reveals the story
28 April 2004 The Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=516003
The shell-shocked look on Nahoko Takato's face said it all. Just over a fortnight ago the shy volunteer aid worker became one of the most recognised people in the world when harrowing footage of her and two other Japanese hostages with swords at their throats was broadcast by the Arabic news channel al-Jazeera.
Their ordeal at the hands of rebel fighters stunned a nation that had, until its involvement in Iraq, thought itself immune from such humiliations. People all over the country shared Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's relief when they were all released unharmed. The guerrillas had threatened to burn the hostages alive unless Japan withdrew its troops from the war-torn country.
But instead of returning to ticker-tape parades and flag-waving crowds, the ex-hostages, including two more who were captured and later released, have been subjected to a relentless barrage of criticism that has sent them scurrying for cover and raised eyebrows in countries where such vitriol is normally reserved for the perpetrators, not the victims.
Ms Takato, who bowed and cried her way through the media scrum at Narita international airport on her return to Japan last week, has not been seen since. A message released through her family apologised for the "trouble" she had caused everyone. One magazine speculated that she may have had a nervous breakdown.
The backlash, almost comic in its ferocity, has been led from the top. Mr Koizumi, whose career hung precariously on the fate of the hostages following his controversial decision to provide Japanese troops to assist the US-led war effort in Iraq, has juggled relief with barely concealed anger in his pronouncements at what the five former detainees - none of whom supported the war in Iraq - have put him through. "I would like them to be more responsible and to consider the trouble they have caused others," he said in his first press conference after their release on 15 April.
That counts as one of the more restrained comments coming from the ranks of Mr Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), one of whose members this week called the returnees "anti-government, anti-Japan elements".
Takeaki Kashimura, a Japanese minister for the LDP, said: "I have heard some of them openly express opposition to Japan's deployment of Self-Defence Forces (SDF) troops in Iraq. I cannot help feeling discomfort in ... spending taxpayers' money on such people."
To add to their misery, the Japanese Foreign Office looks set to hit the ex-hostages with a bill for 2.37m yen (｣12,190) to cover expenses "incurred in their release", with the possibility of more on the way.
Another minister, Nakagawa Shouichi, mused on whether to charge their families for the use of government offices in Japan during the crisis. He said: "People who get lost in the mountains have to pay for their rescue."
The government is being cheered on by much of the conservative press, which has attacked the refusal of the former hostages to heed warnings to stay out of Iraq. Few seem aware of the irony that with most staff journalists staying out of the country, much of the news gathering is being left to freelancers, like two of the former hostages.
It was left to that champion of liberal causes, the US Secretary of State Colin Powell, to defend the actions of the beleaguered five who, he said, should be commended for putting themselves at risk for the "greater good" and "a better purpose". The Japanese people should be "very proud that they have citizens who are willing to do that".
The sulphurous whiff of political revenge for anti-government comments by the hostages' families is hard to miss. Caught on the hop by the press pack as the plight of their loved-ones was beamed out of Iraq, the families made emotional appeals for Mr Koizumi to end his involvement in the American-led war. Ms Takato's family was particularly vocal, leading protests and petitions calling for the SDF to come home.
The other hostages: a photojournalist, Soichiro Koriyama; the peace activists Noriaki Imai and Nobutaka Watanabe, and a freelance journalist, Junpei Yasuda, had all made it clear they were no friends of the government.
But the treatment of the returnees also reflects the very familiar growth of patriotic sentiment, of "supporting our boys" in a country that is divided from top to bottom by Japan's first dispatch of troops to a war zone since the Second World War.
Egged on by the media, some family members of the former hostages were criticised for coming across as hectoring and "selfish" on television and within days hate mail and threatening phone calls were flooding into their rescue centre in central Tokyo. Letters to newspapers heaped vitriol on the families. "You should be more careful about what you say in front of the world's television cameras," said one. "Even if you don't like the troops being in Iraq, we have to be united."
One magazine dug up background on the apparent leftist sympathies of the parents of 18-year-old Mr Imai, who were criticised for letting their son go to one of the most dangerous places on earth. Some suggested that the families were politically motivated and wanted to topple the government.
By the time they faced the foreign media for their first organised press conference, the families had learnt their lesson. One after another, questions about their sympathies and their opinions about the government were fended off with curt "no comments". Mr Imai's father stuck to the role of proud father, rather than political activist. He said: "Our son is old enough to make his own decisions. He just wants to bring peace to the world."
Yesterday, the last two hostages to be released, Mr Yasuda and Mr Watanabe, were coy in an interview with the foreign press. While taking care to repeat the mantra that he was sorry for the "trouble" caused to his country, Mr Yasuda said that he did not feel in much danger in Iraq and felt that "local people have been compelled to take up arms to defend themselves".
Mr Watanabe said their captors made clear they were being held "because the Japanese government sent the Self-Defence Forces to Iraq". Both said they were released because they were not carrying guns and speculated about what might have happened if they had been soldiers rather than activists.
When asked why he had risked his life by going to Iraq, Mr Yasuda said: "I told myself: I'm a journalist and I should take advantage of the situation."
Others have been less reserved. Ayako Nishimura, a peace campaigner and local councillor, is among many who are angry that the government has taken the credit for the release of the hostages. She said: "They were freed was because their captors knew they had nothing to do with the war. I think Mr Koizumi was lucky. It could have been much worse for him."
However, undeterred and possibly emboldened by the jarring serenade his country gave the returnees, and by receiving praise for standing firm in the face of the threats of the hostage-takers, Mr Koizumi has pledged to push ahead with further SDF dispatches to Iraq. His defence minister, Shigeru Ishiba, issued an order yesterday for more troops to travel to Iraq, despite criticism in the liberal press that the 550 soldiers already there have spent much of their time in their base in Samawah in the south of the country.
Meanwhile, the remaining hostages, Mr Koriyama and Mr Imai, who have been diagnosed with acute stress disorder, have promised to speak to the press after they have recovered, possibly at the end of the week.
But of Ms Takato, there is no sign. "The mental anguish suffered by my sister is greater than expected," her brother Shuichi told Japanese television yesterday. "It may be some time before she appears in public."
題名には必ず「阿修羅さんへ」と記述してください。