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Hokkaido Shinbun: Summit Activists get sequestered to faraway campsites
Posted by debito on July 6th, 2008
Hi Blog. I guess this is better than Bush’s “Free Speech Zones“, but only marginally. Places like Tobetsu are more than 100 kms from the Summit site. Arudou Debito in Niseko
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Sapporo and Tobetsu provide campgrounds to civil activists (July 3, 2008)
http://www.hokkaido-np.co.jp/cont/g8summit_news/33142.html?_nva=10
Campsites for civil activists from around the world who are visiting the area for the Hokkaido Toyako Summit were set up in Sapporo and Ishikari Subprefecture’s Tobetsu Town on July 3. Approximately 30 campers from the United States, Germany and other countries arrived in the morning at the Disaster Reserve Center in Tobetsu Town, which has been set up in a closed school, and immediately pitched tents there.
A total of 300 visitors are expected to flock to the sites between now and July 6, and voluntary study meetings are scheduled to be held there. The Sapporo International Exchange Camp Executive Preparation Council (the organization managing the campgrounds) intends to use the sites as spaces to discuss ways of internationalization in a style different from the talks led by the G8 nations.
The city of Sapporo also opened the Nishioka Youth Campground in Toyohira Ward on July 3. The city had designated the campground to the council in response to its request for such a facility, but because the council rejected the site due to issues with its management, more civil activists are expected to stay at the Tobetsu Town campground.
The Summit’s venue town of Toyako in Iburi Subprefecture will also open four campsites on July 6, the day before the event begins. At one of these sites in the forest park of the subprefecture’s Toyoura Town, JR Hokkaido employees will be dispatched to the unmanned JR Rebun Station nearby. Staffing levels will also be increased to prevent confusion at JR Date-Mombetsu Station, where NGOs will operate shuttle buses.
ENDS
July 7th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Debito, Keep the Faith, whichever one! I watched Fukuda & Bush’s press conference live after their Sunday meeting. Fukuda was his usual stiff, but professional, self. Bush, in contrast was rambling, mentally “not there” (seemingly in and out of consciousness and focus) and doing his usual folksy head=bobbing routine. I was appalled at his lack of aplomb. If THIS is the embodiment of the great United States of America, we (as in the rest of the world) are up to our proverbial wazoos in alligators!