Following the Chomsky Affair, Gush Shalom considers a Supreme Court appeal

by Adam Keller

Gush Shalom

Following the Chomsky Affair, Gush Shalom considers a Supreme Court appeal against the Minister of the Interior, demanding clear and transparent criteria for who shall be denied entry into the country and for what arguments. "Such decisions cannot be left to anonymous officials and security operatives, who become a thought police and censor political opinions"

On behalf of Gush Shalom (the Israeli Peace Bloc), Adv. Gabi Laski wrote to Interior Minister Eli Yishai, demanding that he issue regulations with clear criteria on who is to be denied entry into Israel and why. This followed the ban on the entry into Israel (and to the Occupied Territories) of the American linguist Prof. Noam Chomsky – considered among the most important thinkers in the world. There were also many other recent cases of foreign citizens denied entry, such as Spanish clown Ivan Prado. In none of these cases was an explanation or reason offered, beyond unspecified "security reasons".

There are ample grounds for suspicion that the real reason was the political views and activities of those denied entry – which is not a legitimate argument for the government of a country which boasts of being "the only democracy in the Middle East." The ongoing trend of unreasonably and unjustifiably preventing the entry of many people into Israel and the Palestinian territories creates the impression that anyone who criticizes Israel has a reason to worry of being denied entry. This causes great damage to democratic discourse and to freedom of movement, with Interior Ministry officials becoming a kind of "Thought Police" (and incidentally severely damaging the State of Israel's international standing).

Such acts also clearly manifest the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, which goes on unabated even in times of negotiations and "proximity talks". The State of Israel arrogates to itself the right to determine who would and who would not visit the Palestinians – in Chomsky's case, who would be allowed to lecture at a Palestinian university and who would not.

In the letter Att. Lasky reminds that according to Article 14 of the Entry into Israel Law, from which the Minister of the Interior derives the authority to "remove" people who arrive at the country's borders, also obliges the minister to make regulations specifying what categories of people would be forbidden an entry visa or a residence permit . However, the current minister, like his predecessors, avoided making such regulations, leaving the issue to the arbitrary decisions of unnamed officials at the Interior Ministry itself, working with operatives of the Shabak Security Service, who hold secret deliberations and reach secret decisions, without publishing the decision itself or its reasons.

This denial of the principles of public transparency and good governance impairs the possibility of subjecting executive decisions to judicial review. Typically, people who are denied entry into Israel or the Occupied Territories hear about it for the first time when arriving at the Israeli passport control, and are often held in detention for several days and finally expelled from the country, without being given any reason or explanation other than unspecified "security reasons".

In her letter to the minister, Att. Laski Court's quotes Supreme Court rulings clearly stating that the making of this kind of regulations is not left to a minister's discretion, but is an absolute obligation. The regulations must be published in the Official Gazette and define criteria fitting with the principles public transparency and public control over governmental decisions. Failure to make such regulations is an unreasonable conduct on the part of the government, justifying judicial intervention.

Given the above, Adv. Laski asked Interior Minister Yishai to act in accordance with Article 14 of the Entry into Israel Law, and publish regulations specifying the categories of people who would be denied a visa or residence permit, as well as specifying the reasons for such a denial of entry. Absent a satisfactory answer from the minister, Gush Shalom will consider petitioning the Supreme Court.

Contact:

Adv. Gaby Laski +972(0)54-4418988

Adam Keller, Gush Shalom spokesperson +972(0)54-2340749

Israeli Demolition Campaign in Tree Towns Across the West Bank

International Solidarity Movement

In an aggravation of Israeli policy of home demolitions, a house and two shops were razed in the Central West Bank village of Hares this morning. An additional house was reduced to rubble in the village of alKhadder, West of Bethlehem and a 1,000 square meters factory was demolished in the town Beit Sahour.

In what seems as a coordinated move, Israeli forces carried out demolitions in two different areas of the West Bank today, rendering at least 16 people homeless. In recent months, international pressure has cause a significant decline in the demolition of Palestinian houses in the Israeli-controlled Area C of the West Bank. Israel uses its statutory authority in Area C, which spans over 60% of the West Bank, to dramatically limit Palestinian development. Palestinians fear that today’s consorted demolitions may be the opening salvo in a provocative change in Israeli policy.

Mahmoud Zwahare a popular committee member from the Bethlehem region said during the demolitions that “Israel keeps claiming it strives for peace and constantly complains about Palestinian incitement and violence. It is doing so while carrying destructive and irreversible steps on the ground against ordinary civilians. The demolitions today has nothing to do with the security of Israelis and everything to do with provocation and injustice”.

A convoy of eight armored military jeeps and a D9 bulldozer entered the village of Hares in the early morning today and advanced towards the newly built house of Maher Sultan. The house, which Sultan had just finished constructing after five years, was to be home for himself, his wife and their five children. The two story house was quickly demolished by the bulldozer, which left nothing but rubble behind it.

The demolition order was posted on Sultan’s house a month ago, citing a Mohammed Mansour as the owner of the house, which complicated to procedures to stop the demolition. At the time of the demonstration, Sultan was actually at the DCO in Tulkarem to try an negotiate an injunction, unaware that his home is being razed.

After completing the demolition of Sultan’s house, the Israeli forces continued to demolish two stores in the outskirts of the village.

Almost simultaneously, a massive contingent of Israeli forces invaded the town of alKhadder, West of Bethlehem. The massive Israeli bulldozer demolished the house of Ali Mousa, which was home to nine people, including a one year old baby, as soldiers prevented anyone from nearing the house – including the family’s lawyer, who showed soldiers a 2006 court-issued injunction on the demolition.

After completing the demolition, an Israeli Civil Administration officer who was present at the scene informed people that more house demolitions will be carried in the near future.

Shortly after the alKhadder demolition, forces lead by the Israeli Civil Administration demolished a factory in the town of Beit Sahour. Roughly a year ago, Omar Ayyoub, the owner of the factory was served a halt-construction order by the civil administration, which he complied with and have been fighting ever since. When the bulldozers arrived today he pleaded with the officer in charge to stop the demolition, or at least present him with a valid demolition order. The officer refused and ordered to remove Ayyoub from the scene.

Over 60 percent of the West Bank is currently classified as Area C, in which, under the Oslo accords, Israel has complete control, over both civil and security issues. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) some 70 percent of Area C, or approximately 44 percent of the West Bank, has been largely designated for the use of Israeli settlements or the Israeli military. The Israeli authorities generally allow Palestinian construction only within the boundaries of an Israeli-approved plan and these cover less than one percent of Area C, much of which is already built-up. As a result, Palestinians are left with no choice but to build “illegally” and risk demolition of their structures and displacement.

According to information released by the Israeli State Attorney’s Office in early December 2009, approximately 2,450 Palestinian-owned structures in Area C have been demolished due to lack of permit over the course of the past 12 years.

The News (Pakistan) - Letters to the Editor

The News (Pakistan)

The mysterious way in which Maryam Siddiqui, the daughter of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, turned up at her relatives' home in Karachi raises some disturbing questions. If Dr Aafia Siddiqui was indeed captured by US authorities, then it is a mockery of the Pakistani security setup that the US intelligence agencies operate unhindered on Pakistani soil, pick up a citizen of Pakistan whenever they want and drop them off whenever and wherever they like. Are these foreign agencies accountable to anyone? How can the Pakistani security agencies not trace the captors of Maryam Siddiqui? Who is going to pay for the ordeal through which Maryam and her family went during all these years? On the other hand, if the arrest of Dr Aafia Siddiqui and her children was not the work of foreign agencies, is it correct to assume that Maryam Siddiqui has been a prisoner of her country's own security agencies? In either case, whether Dr Aafia Siddiqui's family suffered at the hands of the US or her own country, her case symbolises the horrific and inhumane nature of the war on terror which has brought death and destruction to millions of people in South Asia. The consensus verdict of the New York jury against Dr Aafia Siddiqui, declaring her guilty, shows that the disregard for human rights and justice is institutionally ingrained in western polity. Dr Aafia Siddiqui's case and the war on terror help us understand the disillusionment of the Muslim world from the west and its ideals. Moez Mobeen Islamabad ***** It is good that Dr Aafia Siddiqui's daughter, Maryam Siddiqui, is with her family now. I am pleased that the girl has joined her relatives at last. I hope that Interior Minister Rehman Malik will help recover the still missing son of Dr Aafia Siddiqui. Mr Rehman should pressurise American authorities and get Dr Alafia Siddiqui released along with all those Pakistanis who are detained illegally by the Americans. Mubashir Mahmood Karachi

Holocaust Survivor – Why I Support Palestinian Rights

by Suzanne Weiss

Political Theatrics

In Canada, Holocaust Memorial Day has been established by Heritage Canada to be on April 11. It is a good opportunity to review what we learn from the Holocaust experience and how we apply these lessons to the troubled situation in the Middle East.

This year, students in more than 60 cities took part in educational meetings on conditions in Palestine as part of Israeli Apartheid Week, held March 1–7. It is a controversial event, not popular in Canadian government circles. It is criticized for supposedly dishonouring the victims of Hitler’s holocaust.

I am a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust, the Nazis’ mass murder of Europe’s Jews. The tragic experience of my family and community under Hitler makes me alert to the suffering of other peoples denied their human rights today – including the Palestinians.

True, Hitler’s Holocaust was unique. The Palestinians are victims of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Hitler started with that, but went on to extermination. In my family’s city in Poland, Piotrkow, 99% of the Jews perished.

Yet for me, the Israeli government’s actions toward the Palestinians awaken horrific memories of my family’s experiences under Hitlerism: the inhuman walls, the check points, the daily humiliations, killings, diseases, the systematic deprivation. There’s no escaping the fact that Israel has occupied the entire country of Palestine, and taken most of the land, while the Palestinians have been expelled, walled off, and deprived of human rights and human dignity.

Many levels of government have recently been attacking the movement against Israeli apartheid, saying that it is anti-Jewish in character. This is bizarre. When Nelson Mandela opposed South African apartheid, was this anti-White? No, Mandela proposed that all South Africans, Whites included, join on a basis of democracy and equality in freeing the country from racial oppression. And that is precisely the proposal that the movement against Israeli apartheid makes to all inhabitants of Israel/Palestine.

We are told that Israeli Jews will never accept such a democratic solution. Why? Is there something wrong with their genes or their culture? The very notion is absurd – in fact, its logic is anti-Jewish. Opposition to Israeli apartheid is based on hope – a hope founded on the common humanity of the region’s Jewish and Palestinian inhabitants.

Hope from Holocaust Resistance
My family and their community in Piotrkow, Poland, suffered a hard fate under Hitler. The Nazis forced the city’s 25,000 Jews into the first ghetto in occupied Poland. The resistance movement in the ghetto was unable to link up with resistance outside. Only a couple of hundred Piotrkow Jews escaped death.

But my mother and father then lived in Paris. They were active in the ‘Union des Juifs,’ a Jewish resistance organization closely linked to socialist parties and other anti-Nazi groups. When the Nazis started rounding up Jews in France, the Union des Juifs hid thousands of Jewish children among anti-Nazis across the country. My parents were killed. But a brave peasant family in Auvergne, at great risk, took me in and hid me. And that is why I am here today.

The Nazis were routed, and the resistance dealt blows to racism that are felt in France even to this day.

There is a lesson here for us today. Hitler seemed all-powerful at the time. But he could not crush the resistance, a broad people’s alliance embracing many religions and many political viewpoints.

We need that kind of alliance in resisting oppression today – including the oppression of the Palestinians.

Jewish Values Are Not Those of Israel’s Apartheid
The United Nations has defined apartheid as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.”

The apartheid concept was found in North America when indigenous peoples were confined to reservations in remote corners of the lands stolen from them. The South African Dutch settlers and Israeli government further developed the concept.
Eliminating Israeli apartheid involves three simple measures:

The right of exiled Palestinians to return to their country.

An end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.

The right of Palestinians within Israel to full equality.

On July 9, 2005, 170 Palestinian civil society organizations called for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against the institutions of Israeli apartheid. The BDS movement helped to end the crime of South African apartheid. Since 2005, the BDS movement against Israeli apartheid movement has won wide support around the world.

Nelson Mandela, the great leader of BDS against South African Apartheid, said, that justice for the Palestinians is “the greatest moral issue of the age.”

Support from Jewish Community
I recently discovered that my name is included in a website list of “7,000 self-hating Jews.” Why are Jewish supporters of Palestine labeled as “self-hating”? Because those who make this charge have redefined Judaism in terms of the present policies and character of the Israeli state. They see Judaism as nothing more than a rationale for oppressing Palestinians. What an insult to Jewish religion and culture!

As for the 7,000 self-haters, they need to add a couple of zeros to that total. In my experience, support of Palestine is stronger in the Jewish population than in society as a whole. And Jewish people work alongside their Palestinian brothers and sisters as a strong component of the Palestine solidarity movement.
Holocaust Awareness Week is an appropriate time to review our proud history as Jewish universalists, welcoming and encompassing humanity. We, as Jewish supporters of the Palestinians, stand on the finest traditions of Judaism, its great contributions to human religion, philosophy, science, and solidarity through the ages. The rights we expect for the Jewish people, we demand for all humanity – above all, for the Palestinians that the Israeli government oppresses in our name.

Rioters vent fury at US after Nato troops kill Afghan civilians on bus

by Julius Cavendish

The Independent

Protesters take to streets in Kandahar after attack kills four and leaves 18 wounded

Nato's hopes for winning over the Afghan population in the south of the country ahead of a massive new military campaign took a major blow yesterday when Nato soldiers opened fire on a civilian bus in Kandahar City and killed four passengers.

Eighteen passengers were also injured in the shooting, which sparked riots in Kandahar. Hundreds of protesters burned tyres, chanted "Death to America! Death to Karzai! Death to this government!" and blocked the main road out of the city.

The timing could hardly have been worse, with tensions already rising ahead of a summer offensive designed to bring the city and its surrounds back under the control of the Western-backed government in Kabul.

Nato and Afghan officials said the incident occurred shortly before dawn but accounts of what happened diverge. One passenger, interviewed in hospital, said the bus had pulled over to allow a Nato convoy to pass. "They just suddenly opened fire, I don't know why," said Rozi Mohammad, whose eye was swollen shut and face and clothes were matted with blood. "We had been stopped and after that I don't know what happened."

But Nato said that the bus accelerated as it approached a slow-moving convoy searching for roadside bombs. In the darkness soldiers only saw a large vehicle approaching them at speed and, after trying to warn it off with hand signals and flares, opened fire.

"Perceiving a threat when the vehicle approached once more at an increased rate of speed the patrol attempted to warn off the vehicle with hand signals prior to firing upon it. Once engaged, the vehicle then stopped," Nato said. It added that it had dispatched an "incident assessment team" to find out what happened.

Inside the city, protesters slammed not just Nato but also President Hamid Karzai for failing to stand up to the foreign forces. "The Americans are constantly killing our civilians and the government is not demanding an explanation," said Mohammad Razaq, a local resident. "We demand justice from the Karzai government and the punishment of those soldiers responsible."

Mr Karzai, who has in fact repeatedly criticised Nato for killing civilians, said: "This shooting involving a civilian bus violates Nato's commitment to safeguard civilian life."

The incident was a stark reminder of the difficulties facing US General Stanley McChrystal, the top Nato commander in Afghanistan, who is grappling with a counter-insurgency doctrine that calls for Nato troops to protect Afghan civilians. Since taking command last year, he has issued tighter rules of engagement and kept a constant stream of communication about the need to keep civilian casualties as low as possible.

In a video conference taking questions from troops earlier this year, General McChrystal said with some frustration, "We've shot an amazing number of people" who were not, in fact, threats. In February, he apologised to the Afghan people after a Nato airstrike killed 27 civilians. A separate strike in February killed five civilians suspected of planting roadside bombs close to the scene of Monday's incident.

Kandahar Mayor Gulam Hamidi said the blowback from civilian casualties was obvious. "I've told the Americans and Nato that people are very angry about these kinds of attacks," he said.

In a separate incident soon after the shooting, a Taliban suicide squad attacked the provincial headquarters of the secret police, a heavily defended compound in Kandahar City. Two of the bombers were killed in a 45-minute battle and a third was captured after being injured by security forces.

Nine civilians including a teacher and five children were wounded in the fighting. According to the UN, the Taliban was responsible for 67 per cent of civilians killed in Afghanistan last year.

The story of Christmas – and how it was ruined by Australia

by Kathy Marks

The Independent

Christmas Island was once called the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean. But a detention centre for asylum-seekers is threatening its rare crabs – and enraging the locals.

Until September 2001 Christmas Island, an Australian external territory in the Indian Ocean, was known only for its annual migration of native red crabs. Then John Howard's right-wing government deployed the SAS to prevent the Tampa, a Norwegian tanker, from docking with its cargo of shipwrecked asylum-seekers, and the island became a symbol of Australia's refugee crackdown.

Eight-and-a-half years on, a Labor government is in charge, but Christmas Island – the rugged tip of an extinct volcano, 1,600 miles north-west of Perth – is in the spotlight again. An immigration detention centre built there after the Tampa scandal is overflowing following a flurry of boat arrivals, and with an election due later this year, the former British colony finds itself once more a political football.

Last week the Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, closed the door to Sri Lankans and Afghans, announcing that no new refugee claims would be processed for three to six months. He cited improved security in the two countries; however, cynics noted the timing of the move, which followed the interception this year of 38 boats in Australian waters, and revelations that Christmas Island is full.

The isolated tropical island, an Australian possession since 1958, was once known as the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean because of its profusion of endemic species. Now it has a darker reputation, to the dismay of its 1,200 residents. Some locals – outnumbered nearly three to one by asylum-seekers and Immigration Department staff – can no longer afford rents. The price of food has skyrocketed.

At Flying Fish Cove, the main bay, children bodyboard in the shallow, crystal clear waters as giant frigate birds wheel overhead, waiting to swoop down on a fishermen's catch. It's an idyllic scene – apart from the Australian Navy ship just offshore and the blue-shirted security staff waiting on the jetty for the latest batch of gaunt-looking men, women and children plucked from crowded boats.

Residents – mostly descendants of indentured workers brought over from China and South-east Asia in the late-19th century to work in the island's phosphate mines – have grown accustomed to the almost daily ritual enacted at the cove.

The unscheduled visitors are transported to shore by barge, then transferred to school buses on the jetty and whisked to one of two detention centres. The main facility – situated on a bleak plateau, surrounded by jungle, at the island's north-west extremity – is for single men. Women and children are held in a separate, unfenced camp.

The island, a 45-minute flight from Jakarta, is the centrepiece of an immigration policy described by Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as "tough but humane". Soon after coming to power, he jettisoned Mr Howard's more extreme measures, including dispatching asylum-seekers to the Pacific nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea for processing, and granting refugees five-year rather than permanent visas.

However, as a sop to public opinion, and to dispel the impression of being "soft" on border protection, the government has continued to keep boat people off the mainland. Everyone picked up in Australian waters is taken to Christmas Island. It's an expensive sop: the main detention centre, North West Point, cost A$400m (£242m) to build, and, according to Oxfam, it costs A$1,830 a day to keep a detainee there, compared with A$238 in Sydney.

Locals have come to accept the prison camps, but many remain unhappy. "This is an incarnation of Christmas Island I don't approve of," says Simon Prince, who runs a dive operation. "But we don't get a say. My opinion is that these are people needing our help. I've been involved in rescues [at sea] in the past, and generally they've got a tragic story to tell."

North West Point, a 20-minute drive from residential areas, was supposed to accommodate at most 800 people; currently more than 2,000 are held on the island, with the overflow in prefabricated huts and air-conditioned tents. The facility is surrounded – for reasons that are unclear, in such a remote spot – by a tall metal fence. Islanders call it "that place" or "the dark side".

"Look," says Gordon Haye, Christmas's one taxi driver, swerving to avoid a red crab, "here's the A$50m recreation centre they built as a bribe to put that monstrosity [North West Point] up there." His figures might be inflated – the centre actually cost about A$8m – but there is no mistaking his bitterness towards the Australian government.

Mr Haye says the price of everything has shot up, thanks to the presence of 800 immigration officials, security guards, interpreters and medical staff. "My brother and his son are living in a little shed because they can't afford a house," he says. "I know of a family with two kids living in a laundry at the back of someone's house." Staff at the small hospital are struggling to cope, and waste and sewage services are overloaded.

Sighted on Christmas Day 1643 by a British naval captain, William Mynors, the island was not settled until 1888, when the British realised it contained rich phosphate deposits. Today its three principal residential precincts – Poon Saan (mainly Chinese), Kampong (mainly Malay), and Settlement (mainly European) – reflect its mixed ethnic heritage, as do the Buddhist and Taoist temples, the bright green mosque and the signs in three languages.

Phosphate is still the biggest employer, but mining has been on the wane for years, and an application for new leases – which would involve the destruction of pristine rainforest – is expected to be rejected.

The search is on for something to fill the gap, but Christmas has a history of grand projects that, for a while, seemed to offer economic salvation. A casino popular with Indonesian high-rollers, including cronies of Tommy Suharto, the dictator's son, closed in 1998 after just five years. Plans for a satellite launch pad never got off the ground, and the site has since been swallowed by jungle. Some believe eco-tourism represents the future of the island, which has one roundabout, one set of traffic lights and, instead of a newspaper, a blackboard on which public notices are scrawled – until a tropical downpour washes them away.

For now, though, the industry is tiny, and Linda Cash, marketing manager of the tourism association, sighs when asked about the challenges of promoting the place. "Most people in Australia have got a very skewed view of Christmas Island," she says.

So, for the moment, the refugee business is keeping Christmas afloat. "We have a detention economy on the island," says Gordon Thomson, president of the shire council. "It employs more than 100 people here, so it's our second largest employer."

The staff from outside, flown in at considerable expense to Australian taxpayers, are disliked locally not only for driving up prices, but also for killing native crabs. As well as the red crabs which carpet roads and beaches during their migration from the rainforest to the ocean, Christmas is home to 20 other species, including the robber or coconut crab – the world's largest land invertebrate.

Eaten to extinction, or close to, in many places, the outlandishly sized robber crabs – some as big as small dogs – are protected on Christmas. However, 190 of them have been killed by cars this year, and residents blame outsiders speeding up and down the road to North West Point.

The Tampa crisis is credited with helping Mr Howard to win the 2001 election. Mr Rudd is widely expected to be re-elected, with or without a crackdown. But his new hardline stance will doubtless help – although the numbers of people seeking asylum in Australia are minuscule compared with those in Europe, and 90 per cent arrive by air, not boat.

On Christmas, some yearn for more innocent times. "Everyone thinks of detention now when they think of Christmas Island," says Mr Prince, the dive operator. "I would like the place to be known for what it's best for: as a pristine wilderness, both above and below the water, and as one of the last frontiers of nature."

The island by numbers

2,800 Immigration officials, guards and asylum-seekers on the island

1,200 Estimated permanent population

190 Rare robber crabs to be hit by cars on the island's roads this year, a toll local people blame on outsiders

£242m Estimated cost of construction for the main detention centre

£1,100 Daily cost of holding a detainee on Christmas Island, according to Oxfam

£143 Daily cost of holding a detainee in Sydney

1,600 Distance in miles from the island to Perth, the closest Australian city

13,507 Visas granted by the Australian government to refugees in 2008-09. Of those, 11,010 were granted to those held offshore

Writer Uehara's book on discriminated hamlets wins nonfiction prize

Mainichi Shimbun

Writer Yoshihiro Uehara's book, "Nihon no roji o tabi suru" (Traveling Japan's Alleys), in which he traced the history of "buraku" (discriminated hamlets) in Aomori Prefecture in the north to Okinawa Prefecture in the south has been chosen as the recipient of this year's Oya Soichi Nonfiction Prize.

Uehara's joy was palpable through his matter-of-fact comment: "I'm so happy that the result of my research in the field has received such a great prize."

"Roji," or alleys, as Uehara calls Japan's discriminated hamlets which were inhabited by people and descendants of those considered to be outcastes in Japan's feudal era, was a term that was first employed by the late writer Kenji Nakagami. Uehara says that he employs this term in the book instead of the more commonly used "buraku" because he wants to inherit and build on Nakagami's achievements.

Uehara, who himself is an "alley" native, based his award-winning book on 13 years of research and reporting. The book has gained recognition for its incorporation of the author's fascination with his roots into a travelogue format without the accusatory tone of a whistle-blowing indictment.

"I, myself, have been involved not only in the buraku liberation movement, but also in work on behalf of disabled persons and the homeless," Uehara said. "But in this book, I chose purposely to take a wider perspective than that of activism, and decided I would just write what I have seen with honesty."

Of the four books nominated for the Oya Prize, two focused on buraku. Few nonfiction books covering the topic -- long considered taboo and rarely confronted head-on -- had attracted wide attention in the past. Uehara now thinks the situation is changing.

"I think (the fact that two of the nominated books were about buraku) is more striking and significant than the fact that I won. For someone who has been involved in the issue for 20 years, it feels like we're now living in a completely different age. That such works are now gaining recognition is a sign of great progress."

Uehara's journey is ongoing; he just finished looking into "alleys" in Mie Prefecture. "I want young people to read (the book). And I hope that it can serve as a catalyst also for those people who are not from buraku to think about the nature of their hometowns."

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ひと：上原善広さん＝大宅壮一ノンフィクション賞を受賞

　◇上原善広（うえはら・よしひろ）さん（３６）

　受賞作「日本の路地を旅する」（文芸春秋刊）で、北は青森から南は沖縄まで、被差別部落とその跡をたどった。「地べたをはって取材してきた結果が、大きな賞をいただけてうれしい」。淡々とした口調に、喜びをにじませた。

　「路地」とは、作家の中上健次が被差別部落を言い表した言葉だ。これを使うのは「中上さんの業績を引き継ぎ、さらに深化させたい」という思いか ら。自身も路地の出身である。受賞作は、１３年間の取材に基づく。告発調ではなくさわやかに、出自へのこだわりを紀行文的なスタイルに溶け込ませたことが 評価された。

　「私自身は、部落解放だけでなく、障害者やホームレスの運動にもかかわってきた。しかし本作は、あえて運動からひいた視点で、自分自身が見てきたことを正直に表現しようと思って書いた」

　今回の大宅賞は、候補４作中２作が被差別部落をテーマとしていた。正面から語られることが少なく、この領域のノンフィクション作品は注目されにく かっただけに、「私の受賞より印象的で、すごいこと。２０年間、この問題にかかわってきた人間にとっては隔世の感がある。こうした作品が評価されるように なったのは大きな進歩だと思う」。

　路地を巡る旅は続く。三重県での取材を終えたばかり。「（受賞作を）若い人に読んでほしい。被差別部落出身者以外の人も、それぞれの故郷の土地柄を考えるきっかけにしてくれればいい」＜文・鈴木英生、写真・石井諭＞