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Air strikes against Iraq have begun.
From now on, we start questioning "the war" through our daily lives.
If an air strike is reported, we will carry our message "We Saw Another Air Strike Yesterday" to the streets.
If we think that we should not raise such questions and should keep silence -- because we have no means to help people in the battlefields, because we have no time to participate in anti-war demonstrations, or because we are neither politicians nor anti-war activists --, we are wrong.
Although we, as individuals, do not know exactly how to stop the war, we do not want to look away from the war, keep silence, and bury ourselves in our daily lives.
First, we should realize that many people are dying right at the moment when our quiet lives go on; we wish to emphasize this fact. We hope this act will enable ourselves to view "the war" from a different angle from that of mass media, and to provide an opportunity for everyone to raise questions about the situation.
We believe that countering violence with violence will only bring another war. We begin this project to refuse any war, either that be for America, for Iraq, for justice or for peace. You may remember that the previous air strikes in Afghanistan were at first widely reported, but media coverage of the war waned with the passage of time. Even though people continued to die of air strikes and fire fights, we became less and less aware of this in our daily lives. These wars and air strikes did continue during our shopping hours and work times.
We feel that each one of us should raise his/her voice against this "war", as long as the air strikes and battles continue, and as long and patient as possible, so that the public opinion proves undeniable. Please join us!
OKAMOTO Manako, KOBAYASHI Erika, SHIMIZU Fumiaki, FUKASAWA Kazuhiro
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