Japanese prosecutors go ahead with rape case against U.$. 
serviceman

by MC5 July 26, 2001

On July 19th, Japanese prosecutors went ahead with rape 
charges against a U.$. airforce staff sergeant, Timothy 
Woodland. A week later, a judge denied a request to release 
Woodland on bail. The court system convicts more than 95% of 
people who go to trial in Japan. The United $tates had 
handed over the man for his arrest July 6th. 

Woodland says that sex with the approximately 20-year-old womyn was 
consensual. The location of the alleged rape was the 
"American village" near an Amerikan military base. Reports 
say the incident was on a car hood in a parking lot after 2 
am.(2) While the press(3) reported the womyn's claim that 
the attacker was Black, MIM was unable to confirm that 
Woodland is actually Black from video footage. However, 
since a majority of U.$. military forces are from internal 
semi-colonies, the point is moot. MIM is not going to 
differentiate the race of troops occupying other countries 
or directing forays against revolutionary forces in Vietnam 
(historically) and the Philippines (today). Whether or not 
Woodland or the real rapist is Black, there can be no doubt 
that Black, Latino, native, Asian-descended and white U.$. 
troops are committing crime all over the world. Although 
coverage has now focused on Woodland, there are a number of 
details being left out. It appears that originally there 
were six U.$. servicemen on the scene and that four Marines 
and five air force people witnessed events.(4) For this 
reason, initial reports said the incident was a gang rape. 

Now there are reports that some U.$. troops tried to stop 
the incident but apparently failed -- for what reasons or 
over what length of time, MIM does not know. Japanese police 
say that the Marines tried to stop the rape, but Woodland 
fled with other air servicemen.(5) Troops interviewed by 
foreign media express the belief that they are receiving the 
blame for a political problem between the United $tates and 
Japan. On July 25th, Okinawa's city government started 
discussions of a draft law to put a curfew on U.$. troops --
because some U.$. troops have apparently gone on a rampage 
since the arrest of Woodland.(6) Police arrested two U.$. 
servicemen for trying to burn cars and damaging a 
motorcycle. The suspected arsonist Lance Corporal Fernando 
Rivera Blanes said he was too drunk to remember what 
happened.(7) 

To the U.$. troops who say that they feel 
caught in a trap, MIM says, "yes, you are." The imperialists 
can let a few men suffer the consequences of their system. 
Those who recognize that they are pawns in a system of war 
should take action to remove themselves from pawn status 
instead of complaining about the inevitable. By this we do 
not mean becoming imperialists themselves, but that troops 
need to avoid some or all duties. They definitely should not 
take out their anger on the Japanese. 

MIM believes that the 
people of Japan should step up their activities to expel 
U.$. troops. They have taken the correct approach: "'As long 
as there are U.$. military bases here, these crimes will not 
stop. Why is everyone so concerned about the rights of the 
accused and not the victim?' read a declaration by a group 
of 500 Chatan residents who met Saturday to protest the 
incident."(7) 

On June 19th, the central government of Japan 
renewed its gift of land to use to the U.$. military. The 
Okinawa landowners actually oppose the Okinawa bases and 
many Okinawans grumble about the use of 20% of Okinawa's 
land by the U.$. military.(10) "Meanwhile, Okinawa residents 
expressed indignation over crimes committed by U.$. 
servicemen in the prefecture. 'It is impossible for U.$. 
soldiers, who undergo daily training in killing people, and 
prefectural citizens, who wish to live in peace, to coexist 
on this small island,' said Mie Kunimasa, representing a 
women's group opposed to U.$. bases in the prefecture."(11) 

At all levels of Japanese society, there is both sympathy 
for and opposition to U.$. troops. Okinawa businesspeople 
continue to say that they need the business from the U.$. 
troops. Meanwhile, some Japanese have pointed out that the 
womyn was in a U.$. entertainment district notorious for 
rowdy late-night behavior. An Okinawan rape crisis center 
claims that the alleged rape victim has written to attack 
some weekly media outlets in Japan for criticizing her for 
being out late at night in the wrong sort of place and thus 
causing an international incident. The alleged rape victim 
asked that the media stop covering the incident -- a demand 
which MIM feels to be naive to the point of being unhelpful 
to the movement to stop rape.

The rape crisis center raised 
the typical line that if the media criticizes wimmin, then 
wimmin will not report rapes.(8) Furthermore, it is of 
course logically true that even if someone is standing in 
the middle of a prostitution district, a womyn should have 
the right to sexual consent with no assumptions made. 

Nonetheless, MIM's reasoning is not the same as the typical 
state-backed rape crisis center of an imperialist country, 
because it is simply too difficult to enforce individual so-
called rights, and that is why the anti-rape struggle is not 
making progress. In the first place -- leaving aside for now 
whether justice can be achieved with the approach used by 
rape crisis centers -- we find it reactionary to accept in 
any way that someone should hold justice hostage in order to 
avoid criticism. By this reasoning, no one would ever 
investigate a murder, because the murderer may choose to 
criticize the investigator with weapons. 

Surely an approach 
that relies on the kindness of murderers or pornographic, 
profit-driven imperialist media outlets is doomed to 
failure. These rape crisis center leaders are what MIM calls 
"gender bureaucrats." By the terms of the financial support 
for their careers and by their natural political outlook, 
gender bureaucrats refuse to embrace the fact that 
capitalist media cannot produce justice in gender questions. 

The capitalist media is in the business of making money, and 
it can't do that when all the media outlets say the same 
thing, so we should not be surprised that quoting the rape 
crisis centers favorably or opposing them is a money-making 
proposition. Gender bureaucrats seek to divert struggle into 
acceptable reformist channels while propping up the state 
and the gender hierarchy. In fact, their activities amount 
to a diversification of pornography and sexual hierarchy --
a new challenge to keep the decadent romance culture 
exciting. 

These rape crisis centers argue that wimmin should 
have the individual right to go where they please and have 
their word count against men who get sent to prison for long 
prison terms (although, in this particular rare sort of 
case, it appears that there were numerous witnesses who 
might be able to shed some light on whether the sex was 
consensual or not). Already the Japanese media has pointed 
out a U.$ case where a rapist is facing a 25-year sentence. 
Contrary to Western imperialist pseudo-feminism, MIM does 
not believe the romance culture is worth any price. The 
"right" of individual wimmin to go anywhere at any hour in 
any state of dress or un-dress and then have their word 
stand as convincing evidence in a rape case is not 
categorically worth upholding: If society can come to an 
arrangement whereby wimmin do not come into contact with men 
in certain circumstances, it may very well be worth it. It 
is better to have a uniform custom that eliminates the 
maximum possible number of ambiguous situations, than to 
approach questions individually.

Currently, biological females' own subjective preferences are 
sharply divided. Many believe there should be circumstances where a 
biological male feels confident in being aggressive. They 
feel that a womyn like the one in the Okinawa case is in 
reality "loose" and "confused" and makes it difficult for 
all the desired heterosexual pursuits to occur between the 
sexes. Yet, there are also wimmin who feel that men are 
already too aggressive in almost any circumstance, because 
in the Mike Tyson rape case, a womyn in pajamas in his hotel 
room at 2am succeeded in convicting him of rape -- possibly 
on the strength of his foul language and direct approach to 
wimmin and more legitimately, based on vaginal tearing. 

While MIM can almost never say what has happened in an 
individual case -- and that is part of the whole problem of 
individual rights and the media focus on sensational cases -
- MIM can say that it disagrees with the individual approach 
to rape. Even if the Woodland case turns out to have a clear 
outcome that everyone accepts, there will be others where it 
simply becomes too difficult to tell what is going on in 
parking lots at 2:15 am. In such cases, "individual freedom" 
has failed rape and prison victims. By upholding the "right" 
of wimmin to be in military entertainment districts outside 
bars at 2:10 a.m., gender bureaucrats uphold pure individual 
"rights" with no hope of actually existing at the expense of 
victims -- whether those victims are rape victims or people 
wrongly slandered and put in prison. MIM questions whether 
the "right" to be outside a bar in the "American village" at 
2:10 a.m. is worth the rape of a single womyn or the 
imprisonment of a single man, because MIM starts from the 
point of view that we will toss the romance culture before 
we create a justification for the state and the existence of 
prisons. We also need to watch out that the introduction of 
prison to romance customs does not become another "thrill" 
in the chase. 

Whether it is Japanese men, Amerikan men or 
other foreign men involved, all sex takes place under the 
current system of inequality and coercion; in that sense, 
all sex is rape. The whole system needs changing.

Notes: 1. 
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/07/19/okinawa.rap
e/index.html ; 
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/07/08/rape.htm ; 
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&id=47261 2. 
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/june01/2001-06-29-
rape.htm 3. http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:-
YcQrnMe2eM:sg.news.yahoo.com/010703/3/18a30.html+Woodland+Ja
pan+rape+Black&hl=en 
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:fn5B9k3c-
AM:www.timesofindia.com/050701/05aspc2.htm+Woodland+Japan+ra
pe+Black&hl=en 4. 
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&id=39669 5. 
http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-
bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20010704a1.htm 6. 
http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-
bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20010726a5.htm 7. 
http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-
bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20010723a6.htm 8. 
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&id=47060 9. 
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/07/09/okinawa-
usat.htm 10. 
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&id=36311 11. 
http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-
bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20010705a4.htm