To: Takenori Kanzaki, Chief Representative, New Komei-to Party

      Toshiko Hamayotsu, Acting Chief Representative, New Komei-to Party

Dear Officers,

On January, 23 2004, Ms. Toshiko Hamayotsu, a Acting Chief Representative of New Komei-to party, delivered a speech representing the party in the upper house of the national diet of .  In her speech, we firmly believe that Ms. Hamayotsu quoted Dr. Galtung’s words out of context.  Therefore, we demand that Ms. Hamayotsu and New Komei-to party to retract the quote and officially apologize to Dr. Galtung.

Ms. Hamayotsu’s speech includes the following:

“There is no argument regarding the purpose of the deployment of the Self Defense Force to Iraq; it is for the humanistic support to rebuild and not for war.”

“A world renowned peace scholar and activist, Dr. Johan Galtung, said:  ‘We must be realists with our minds while keeping the flame of idealism burning in our hearts.’  We, the New Komei-to party, shall be a party for peace with action, while holding a high ideal for peace, for humanity, and for human rights.  For every problem that we face, we are determined to challenge ourselves to find real solutions while remaining grounded in reality.”

There are two points we would call to your attention.  First, Dr. Galtung has consistently opposed the US invasion of Iraq and the deployment of Japanese Self Defense Forces to Iraq.  Therefore, it is highly inappropriate to quote him in a speech that was delivered to justify the current war efforts of the United States and Japanese governments.  Secondly, following this sentence that you quoted, Dr. Galtung further elaborated “Being blind to realities helps no one.  By the same token, people who cannot develop a humane idealism transcending realism cannot contribute to the progress of humankind.”  From the entire quote, it is clear to us that the New Komei-to party, which has supported the US policy from the very early stage of the current conflict, has failed to “transcend realism”, and failed to “contribute to the progress of humankind.”   We are seriously worried that the current international policies of the party sharply deviate from its founding principles.

Since it was delivered in a highly public and official manner, Ms. Hamayotsu’s speech will be recorded in history.  In order to eliminate any possibility of misunderstanding Dr. Galtung now and in the future, we demand that the above quotation be officially retracted from the record, and that the New Komei-to party and Ms. Hamayotsu issue official letters of apology immediately.  Those letters should also be published in its organ paper.  We also demand that Dr. Galtung be given appropriate space to elaborate his position on the current Iraq conflict in the organ paper.

Yours truly,

World Citizens Renouncing War