For Immediate Release: AMOCAAMP Condemns Auckland Local Politicians' Surrender to Japanese Neo-fascism

The Dangerous Logic of Trish Deans and the Devonport-Takapuna Local Board

Korean anti-fascists burn the flag of Imperial Japan at a protest in Seoul against Japan's continued refusal to compensate the 'comfort women'. A statue memorialising these women can be seen on the left of the photo.

The Devonport-Takapuna board has voted against allowing Auckland's Korean community to put a statue of a 'comfort woman' in Barry's Point Reserve. If the ethnonationalist logic the board used was consistently applied, then many of New Zealand's memorials and museum displays would have to come down.

Japan's ambassador lobbied hard against the statue, arguing that it would damage community relations in Auckland by pitting Japanese against Koreans. It's important to stop and consider the outrageous assumption behind such a claim.

Japan's ambassador is suggesting that Japanese Aucklanders would oppose the statue simply because it represented criticism of the Japanese state's actions during World War Two. He assumes that all Japanese must agree and identify with the Japanese state. This is the logic of ethnonationalism, and fascism. It is in a fascist system that the people living in a nation are treated as identical to its state.

Auckland museum has a permanent exhibit on the Surafend massacre, which saw scores of Palestinian civilians killed by Anzac troops at the end of 1919. Surafend has been called the worst Anzac war crime by scholars. Let's apply the Japanese ambassador's logic to this display.

Just as the comfort women statue would represent a criticism of the Japanese state, so the Surafend display criticises New Zealand state forces. By the ambassador's logic, the Surafend display is an attack on New Zealanders, and could cause community disharmony.

Of course, the Surafend display is not an attack on New Zealanders, any more than a comfort women statue would be an attack on Japanese. A state is not identical with its citizens and with the descendants of those citizens. AMOCAAMP's members do feel attacked by the Surafend display.

Nor should any Japanese person feel attacked by a statue of comfort women. The ability of the individual to criticise the state is fundamental to democracy. It's in fascist & other authoritarian systems that the identity of the individual & the state is asserted.

If there's anything that will damage community relations in Auckland, it is members of national groups identifying uncritically with their overseas governments. Local government should be encouraging the sort of transcendence of overseas conflict seen last year in Ahuriri.

After India and Pakistan went to war, members of the Hawkes Bay Indian & Pakistani communities united for a peace concert. They made it clear that they felt no need to identify uncritically with their respective governments. Japan's ambassador could learn a lesson.

Japan's current PM Sanae Takaichi comes from her country's far right milieux. Her critics point to the way she once promoted a book that celebrated Hitler, & her longstanding ties to the country's National Socialist Party. Perhaps the Takapuna-Devonport board is not aware of what an unhealthy government gives Japan's ambassador his orders. Board chair Trish Deans claims that the comfort women statue is inappropriate because it is 'political'. This is true but irrelevant. For decades Japan ruled Korea and tried to assimilate its people. The uniqueness of Korea's language and literature was downplayed, as many other aspects of its culture. Asserting Korean culture was an act of political defiance.

Statement by the Provisional Guiding Committee of the Alternate Ministry of Culture for Aotearoa Moana Pacific (AMOCAAMP)

We call for the raising of the statue to the Comfort Women.

We call for the members of Devonport-Takapuna Local Board who voted against the statue to visit Auckland museum and ponder the lessons of Surafend.

To protest against the neo-fascism of the Takaichi government and its representative in Auckland, AMOCAAMP will be holding a mass immolation of imperial Japanese flags at a time and place of our choosing.

In November 1934 Italian warship the Armando Diaz visited Poneke/Wellington. Its crew were welcomed by local politicians and by the Returned Services Association, which organised this service at the city's war memorial. Note the crew from the Armando Diaz giving fascist salutes. In the 1930s New Zealand's politicians and many of its citizens repeatedly welcomed fascist visitors from Italy and Germany. The Labour government elected in 1935 kept hundreds of would-be Jewish refugees out of the country in an effort to appease the Nazis, with whom they had a free trade deal. The Devonport-Takapuna Board is continuing the inglorious tradition of the 1930s by appeasing Japan's neo-fascists. 

_

RS: AMOCAAMP is an organisation of psychogeographers, scholars, and artists, the successor to the Committee for the Reconstruction of Space and Time on Pig Island (CROSTOPI). It has branches in Tāmaki Makaurau, the Waikato, and Luahoku.