Roland San Juan: Ann Wright: Dangerous Military Buildup in Asia and Pacific

Ann Wright: Dangerous Military Buildup in Asia
and Pacific

South Korea constructs new Naval Base on Jeju Island, U.S. Plans
to Expand Military Base on Okinawa and China Builds on South China
Sea Atolls

By Ann

Wright - (War

Is A Crime) - June 11, 2015

The international community is extraordinarily concerned about the
Chinese construction on small islands and atolls in disputed waters
off China, Vietnam, Taiwan and Japan. Over the past 18 months, the
Chinese government has created islands out of atolls and larger
islands out of small ones.

With the Obama administration’s “pivot” of the United States
military and economic strategy to Asia and the Pacific, the Chinese
have seen military construction in their front yard.

I’ve just returned from my third trip to Jeju Island, South Korea.
Jeju is called the Island of Peace. However, it’s where the South
Korean military has almost finished construction of a new naval
base, the first military base on this strategically located island
south of the mainland of Korea that is littered with U.S. and South
Korean military bases, left over from the Korean war and that are a
part of the U.S. “defense” of South Korea from “aggression” from
North Korea.

The Jeju Island naval base will be the homeport for ships that carry
the U.S. Aegis missiles. Many on the island call it a U.S. naval
base since it will be a key part of the U.S. “pivot” to Asia and the
worldwide U.S. missile defense system. They believe that the naval
base will be used as frequently by U.S. warships as by South Korean
ships and submarines. With a naval base on Jeju Island, they believe
that Jeju Island becomes a target should military hostilities break
out in Asia and the Pacific.

The naval base was built in the pristine waters off Gangjeong
Village midst seven years of intense civic outrage. The destruction
of the marine environment off the village where the famous women
divers for decades have harvested by hand the “fruits of the sea” is
one of the cultural and economic losses the construction of the
naval base has caused.

The destruction by huge dynamite explosions of a unique geologic
rock formation called “Gureombi” is a cultural and spiritual loss to
the islanders. Its tide pools, crystal clear springs and lava rock
formations made “Guremobi” a favorite area for villagers and
visitors to the island.

The construction of the naval base in spite of strong local
opposition is a part of the history of oppression of the people of
Jeju Island from the mainland government. After the Korean War,
South Korean and United States military forces which conducted the
infamous April 3 massacres of over 30,000 islanders who were
believed to be opposed to the right wing Singman Rhee government,
dissidents and sympathizers for reunification of Korea. The April 3
“incident” left a deep scar on the people of Jeju Island and made
them very sensitive to mainland government policies, particularly
those which “target” them again.

The South Korean government has built the naval base in one of the
most inhospitable areas of Jeju Island. The naval base faces the
open ocean and has already been battered by two typhoons which have
displaced huge concrete cassions which form the foundation of the
quarter-mile breakwater created to protect the base from the sea.
The government attempted to put the base at two more favorable
geographic locations on Jeju Island but were deterred by citizens
who successfully refused to allow the base to be constructed in
their part of the island.

Despite large and continuing protests in Gangjeong village against
the construction of the naval base, the South Korean national
government reportedly with intense pressure from the United States
decided that they had to begin construction somewhere on the island
and chose to ignore the strong local opposition.

However, the decision has come at a great cost to the national
government. Daily demonstrations and frequent large demonstrations
with planeloads of mainlanders flying into help islanders, have
resulted in the government having to deploy hundreds of police from
the mainland to counter the demonstrations. Local police on Jeju
Island are felt to have too much sympathy for the demonstrations and
therefore police from the mainland are needed. Islanders see this as
an historic throwback to the April 3, 1948 oppression of opposition
to mainland government policies.

Each day at Gangjeong village begins with a 7am demonstration of 100
“bows” at the front gate of the naval base. Protesters block one
lane of the base forcing a slowdown of traffic of concrete trucks
and other vehicles entering the base. For almost an hour, the
demonstrators silently offer thoughts on the militarization of their
island as they bow or kneel. At 11am Catholic priests and laywomen
conduct a daily mass across from the front gate as other priests and
activists sit in chairs blocking both lanes into and out of the
base. Every 20 minutes, a platoon of young police men and women
march into the seated protesters and carry the chair and the person
sitting in it to the side of the road, opening the road for traffic
for five minutes. Then the police march back into the base and the
protesters immediately move their chairs back to block the lanes
into the base. After an hour of blocking the entrance, the protest
ends with an energetic dance — and traffic resumes. Long-time
activists recognize that the hour protest is a small delay in the
construction of the base, but consider the two daily protests as
extremely important actions to remind the national government of
their continuing opposition to the military base.

My first visit to Jeju Island was in 2011. At that time, activists
still had their camp on the Guremobi rocks on the edge of the ocean.
The camp consisted of a long educational tent, a sleeping tent and a
cook and eating tent. Every day activists would conduct workshops
and ceremonies on the rocks.When I returned in 2013, despite the
intense efforts of the activists, the Guremobi rock formation had
been blown up with dynamic and construction had begun with two huge
facilities built on the remains of the rocks to create the massive
concrete caissons that would be lowered into the ocean to form the
quarter mile long breakwater to protect the base from the open
ocean.

Returning two years later in 2015 with eight women from the
Women Cross the DMZ walk www.womencrossdmz,
including Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire and CODEPINK
co-founder Medea Benjamin, I was devastated to see the vastness
of the naval base which is nearing completion. Although
statistics on the amount of concrete that has been poured into
the ocean and into the buildings on the base are unavailable,
the sheer scale of the base leads one to guess that a road
around the world could have been built with that volume of
concrete.

And it's not just on the base itself that construction has
proceeded. As villagers suspected from the beginning, the base
would expand into other parts of the community. More land near
the base is now being condemned by the government so it can be
used to build housing for military personnel and their families.

After seven years of large protests against the construction of
the military base, the base has been built -- and the Chinese
know it as they have watched the construction -- up close -- as,
remarkably, the South Korean government allows Chinese tourists
to visit Jeju Island without a visa. The Chinese tourist trade
is large -- as is the purchase of land by Chinese on Jeju
Island. A big area on Jeju Island is now a Chinese "health"
vacation area with condos and other facilities for Chinese --
even the road signs in the area are in Chinese!

The Chinese are watching another construction project in the
Pacific. This time a United States military base on the southern
Japanese island of Okinawa. Despite massive Okinawan opposition,
including a visit in May 2015 of the governor of Okinawa to
Washington, DC, the U.S. is planning to begin expansion of Camp
Schwab, a U.S. Marine Corps base and construction of an airfield
runway on Okinawa. The runway will project out into the South
China Sea into pristine waters with endangered coral formations
and into the habitat of the dugong, a manatee-like marine
mammal. Okinawa makes up 1% of Japan's land mass but is the
location of 74% of all U.S. military bases in Japan.

Okinawans have been protesting

for years the expansion of Camp Schwab, a U.S. Marine
Base. Only last month, over 35,000 Okinawans gathered to voice
their opposition to their national government's approval of the
base despite the opposition of all levels of the Okinawan
provincial government and island civil society.

In 2007, I visited the activists on Okinawa at their seaside
camp where they have a daily presence to remind the U.S.
military that they do not want the naval base. The senior
citizens of the village of Henoko moved their Senior Citizens
center to the beach so they could participate each day in
attempting to preserve their village from another military base.
(RT footage)

The Chinese have been watching the process for the building of
another U.S. base in the Pacific, as they have watched the
expansion of U.S. military forces on the U.S. territory of Guam.
The projected increase in U.S. military personnel and their
families is expected to increase the population of the small
Micronesian island by 30 percent.
In another interesting economic considerations versus foreign
policy posturing between sparing countries, Russian tourists to
Guam do not need a visa to the United States to visit the
island.
The bottom line is that the Chinese see the expansion of the
United States military forces and capabilities in their front
yard and are constructing their own projections of power on the
tiny disputed islands and atolls off their coast. Neither the
United States nor China need any of these bases as both have
more than enough air capability in the form of aircraft or
missiles to initiate or counter any military move by the other.
All of this construction is another example of the never
ending, massively expensive war mindset of political leaders and
their financial backers who profit from a hostile world.

(*) Ann Wright is a 29 year US
Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former
US diplomat who resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war
on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December,
2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in
Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book "Dissent:
Voices of Conscience." (www.voicesofconscience.com).

She has written frequently on rape in the military.

-------------

Must read too: The

Killer Elite, At Home and Abroad by John Grant

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