Dear fighting friends all over the world

? ?(全世界の闘う仲間のみなさんへ)

? We’re Zengakuren (All Japan Federation of Students’ Autonomous Body), and we are writing to you directly for the first time. Thank you very much for the protest to Masuda Toshio, rector atthe Hosei Univ. and e-mail to us the other day.

On Dec 22, we achieved the release of 3 students!

・SAITO Ikuma (the President of Hosei Univ. Federation of Cultural Clubs)

・TOMIYAMA Kotaro (the Secretary-general of Zengakuren)

・KURAOKA Masami (the Vice-President of Zengakuren)

And finally on Dec 28 we achieved the release of remaining 5 students!

・ODA Yosuke (the President of Zengakuren)

・ARAI Taku (Zengakuren, the Student of Hosei Univ.)

・UTSUMI Yuichi (Zengakuren, the Student of Hosei Univ.)

・ONDA Ryo (the Vice-President of Federation of Cultural Clubs of Hosei Univ.)

・MASUI Makoto (the Federation of Cultural Clubs of Hosei Univ., responsible for its projects)

?

Thus we have finally joined again all eight friends who were arrested in April or May, last year and had been detained in the Tokyo Detention Center for nine months!? It is a great victory that was gained by not only one country but also by the whole world. We thank you sincerely again. All 8 students are very fine and started their fights on their campus immediately.

Especially, it has great meaning that we have beaten “Law concerning the Punishment of Physical Violence and Others”. It’s the law that has been used for crackdown on labor movement, farmer movement-, and so on in order to enter into WW?. This victory shows clearly that as long as there’s firm solidarity of the students and the worker across the border, we’ll never be defeated!? The power of us students and the worker is infinite!

Our fight starts now from here. This year 2010 developing amid the global economic crisis will be a year of the turbulence, especially for us students. The reality that we face in Japan is totally same as yours in Europe. The Democratic Party government regards the budget for education and study as “waste”, and cuts off them. Now in Japan only 73.1% of the university students and only 68.1% of the high school students can get a job. Every campus and the whole street are full of anger.

We do honor the fight in Germany and throughout Europe since last autumn genuinely. We’re sure the fight of that “hot autumn” has encouraged the students of all over the world.

We’re sorry that we can’t create large-scale fights such as yours yet. However, we’ll surely create huge strike against “the privatization of the education” in 2010 with 3,000,000 students here in Japan, and join your fight!

We, Zengakuren, have been building up solidarity with the fighting workers such as Doro-Chiba. The future of us students is in the joint struggle with workers, because they do run all of this society. We want to deepen solidarity with overseas friends more and more from now on. It is absolutely necessary to become the one for our victory. We’ll fight international solidarity struggle with the strike in California on March 4.

We think now we have a great chance under the global economic crisis!?

Gathering the anger of the student of the whole world as one, let’s regain all that we were robbed of in our hand!

Let’s fight together from now on until the victory!

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　In Struggle & Solidarity,