Walden Bello

Winner of the Right Livelihood Award in 2003 for “outstanding efforts in educating civil society about the effects of corporate globalisation, and how alternatives to it can be implemented”, Walden Bello is one of the most important Southern leaders in the global anti-war movement post9/11 period. He is the National Chair Emeritus and National Chair of the party Akbayan, one of the fastest growing parties in the Philippines, which has two members in the National Assembly. He is also a Professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines and the Executive director of Focus on the Global South. Walden is the member and former Chair of the board of Greenpeace South East Asia and is also a board member of Food First, the International Forum on Globalisation, and the Transnational Institute.

He has won praise for his writing, as the author or editor of 11 books on Asian issues and a range of articles, notably American Lake: The nuclear peril in the Pacific (1984) (co-authored with Peter Hayes and Lyuba Zarsky), People and Power in the Pacific (1992), Dark Victory: The United States and Global Poverty (1999), Global Finance: Thinking on regulating speculative capital markets (2000) and The Future in the Balance: Essays on globalisation and resistance (2001). He won the New California Media Award for Best International Reporting in 1998. The Belgian newspaper Le Soir recently called Walden "the most respected anti-globalisation thinker in Asia".

Wooksik Cheong

Wooksik Cheong is a full time representative of Civil Network for a
Peaceful Korea (CNPK); Nonresident Special Columnist, Ohmynews (a leading South Korean web-based newspaper); Guest Columnist, Naeil Shinmoon (South Korean daily newspaper). He is also a Policy Advisor for Korean Action against Deployment of Troops to Iraq, an advisor at the Center for Peace and Disarmament and at People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD). Previous Wooksik has worked as an advisor on the presidential transition committee of reunification, diplomacy, security in 2003. Between 2001 and 2004 he was the executive director of the Korean Committee against Missile Defense and for Peace as well as the co-director of the Korean National Council for Peace.

Hassan Gardezi

Born 1933 in Multan, southern Punjab, Hassan has been a political activist since high school days. A sociologist and anthropologist by training and profession, he earned his PhD at Washington State University, USA. He has served as Head of Department of Sociology, Punjab University, Lahore and written several journal articles and books on the political economy of Pakistan and South Asia, including a well-regarded edited work, The Roots of Dictatorship in Pakistan: The political Economy of a Praetorian State (Zed Press, London and Oxford University Press, New Delhi). He has also published translations of and commentaries on Sufi poetry written in Punjabi, Siraiki and Sindhi languages. Currently he is serving on the editorial boards of a number of journals, including Critical Asian Studies (previously Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars) and Pakistan Development Review.
Since emigration from Pakistan during the Ayub Khan dictatorship, Hassan has taught and lectured at a number of North American colleges and universities as well as Pakistani institutions. Currently he is retired from teaching at Algoma University College, Sault Ste Marie, as Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Anthropology.

Joseph Gerson

Dr. Joseph Gerson is Director of Programs and Director of the
Peace and Economic Security Program for AFSC in New England. His work focuses on U.S. global hegemony, particularly U.S. preparations for and threats to initiate nuclear war and U.S. military domination of the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. He works closely with Asian anti-nuclear, anti-bases, and peace organizations and has played active roles in the World Conference against A- and H-Bombs held annually in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki since 1984. He is currently completing a book titled Empire and the Bomb: How the United States Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World to be published by Pluto Press next year. Previous books include The Sun Never Sets...Confronting the Network of Foreign U.S. Military Bases; With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion, and Moral Imagination; and The Deadly Connection: Nuclear War and U.S. Intervention. As a Vietnam-era draft resister, he directed Arizonans for Peace and served on the staff of Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam. He helped to launch the nuclear freeze movement, led opposition to the transformation of New England harbors nuclear weapons bases, and helped to create peace and anti-war coalitions in the Boston area, the U.S., and internationally. He received his BSFS from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 1968 and his PhD in Politics and International Security Studies from the Union Institute and College in 1995.

Mikiso Iwasa

At age 16, Mikiso became an A-bomb orphan, losing his mother and little sister in the Hiroshima A-bomb. He was at his Japanese home located 1.2 kilometers from the ground zero. He is a retired professor of law, and presently working as Assistant General Secretary of the Japan Confederation of A-and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo). He has authored Hiroshima on August 6: Stories for Children (National Cooperative Union publication) and co-authored Witnesses of Death and Life in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Shin-Nihon Shuppan Co.)

Kang Jian

Kang Jian is director of Beijing Fangyuan Law Office. During the past ten years, she has taken part in civil lawsuits against Japan foregoing compensation and took the lead in carrying out the investigation and obtaining of evidence in China. She also appeared in the Japanese courts to serve as expert assistant to the Chinese victims of atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial army. Out of the 25 lawsuits filed by the Chinese victims, Attorney Kang has been involved in 14 case.

As an internationally renowned advocate for Chinese victims, including the Chinese “comfort women”, Kang was a member of the International Organizing Committee members of the International Women's Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery held in 2000 in Tokyo and served as one of the prosecutors to convict Emperor Hirohito guilty at this "history-breaking" event.

Li Xiaolin

Vice President, Chinese People Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. Li Xiaolin graduated with a BA degree in English from Wuhan University in 1975. From 1982 to 1983 she studied at the University of California in Los Angeles and graduated with an MA in Asian American Studies.

She has been with the Chinese People Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) ever since 1975. She became head of the Department of American and Oceanic Affairs of CPAFFC in 1993. She took office as vice president of the CPAFFC in 1996 and served as First Secretary in the Chinese Embassy to the United States from 1990 to 1992.

Zia Mian

Zia is a research assistant with the Program on Science and Global Security (PS&GS) at Princeton University and lecturer of public and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School. He has been a research associate with PS&GS (formerly the Program on Nuclear Policy Initiatives) at Princeton University since 1997. His interests include nuclear weapons and nuclear energy programs in South Asia, and finding alternative policies that can contribute to disarmament and sustainable development. He has edited and co- edited a number of books on South Asia, including most recently, Out of the Nuclear Shadow (co-edited with Smitu Kothari; Zed Press, London and Rainbow Press, New Delhi, 2001). Zia is also co-editing a forthcoming volume with Iftikhar Ahmad and Dohra Ahmad, Between Past and Future: Selected Essays on Pakistan by Eqbal Ahmad (Oxford University Press, Karachi).

Roy Miki

Roy Miki is a writer, poet, and editor who teaches contemporary literature at Simon Fraser University. He was born in Winnipeg but relocated to the West Coast in the late 1960s. He is the author of Justice in Our Time (co- authored with Cassandra Kobayashi) (Talonbooks 1991), a documentary history of the Japanese Canadian redress movement in which he actively participated, two books of poems, Saving Face (Turnstone 1991) and Random Access File (Red Deer College Press 1995), and collection of critical essays, Broken Entries: Race, Subjectivity, Writing (Mercury Press 1998). His third book of poems, Surrender (Mercury Press 2001), received the Governor General Award for Poetry. His latest book is Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (Raincoast 2004), a work that explores the Japanese Canadian redress movement through a creative blend of personal reflection, documentary history, and critical examination.

Imran Munir

Born in Pakistan, he received his M.A. in Political Science from Punjab University, Lahore, and M.A. in Communication from Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC. Imran is currently a candidate for Ph.D. in Communication at SFU.

Imran has worked as the senior staff reporter for The News International, as a senior correspondent, The Daily Nation, a senior reporter for The News, a staff reporter / feature writer for The Frontier Post, and as a field producer for the Worldwide Television Network. Imran was actively involved in the People’s Theatre movement in the 80s to protest martial law and restore democracy in Pakistan. He has directed and acted in anit-military and pro-democracy plays in many towns and villages of Pakistan.

Kenichi Ohkubo

Born in 1947, Ohkubo Kenichi is the Secretary General of Japan Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (JALANA). JALANA advocates for the development of non-military pacifism of the Japanese Constitution, basic human rights and democracy, and opposes military intervention of U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as a neo-liberalist society where the law of the jungle rules. The goal of his activities are to stop the use of arms by the U.S., to abolish nuclear weapons, and to establish an international community where life and freedom of humans will develop fully, based on their right to live in happiness.

Born 1930, Hiroshi graduated from University of Tokyo in 1953 and became lawyer in 1956. He received a recognition by the Chinese media a few years ago being chosen as one to the most impressive ten persons in 2003. He was the only non-Chinese person among them. He was the chief attorney for the Chinese Compensation cases including the damages caused by abandoned chemical weapons in China. (Electronic People's Daily, Feb., 21, 2004)

In Japan he has been well known as the chief attorney for the Ienaga History textbook law suits which lasted over 30 years and concluded in 1997 at the Supreme Court of Japan.

Promod was born in the State of Jammu and Kashmir in 1946, the year before the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan. He received early education in the Indian part of J & K and Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Punjab. After growing up with stories of refugee families and the immense suffering caused by the partition, he worked on several daily newspaper in India. After emigrating to Canada founded, edited and published the South Asian Canadian Newspaper, The Link from 1973 to 1999. From 1975 to 1978 Promod edited the First Nations newspaper, The New Nation, which was published from Winnipeg-based Indian and Metis Friendship Center. During the 70s he produced a popular TV program on Winnipeg’s multicultural and community affairs channel. In 1978 he moved The Link to Vancouver and continued its publication in B. C. Currently he is retired, an continues to watch media with interest.

Hari Sharma

Hari Sharma was born in India and holds an MA in Sociology (University of Delhi) and a PhD (Cornell). He has taught at Delhi University, UCLA, and Simon Fraser University (1968-1999). He is a Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University.

Hari Sharma has written several journal articles on India and is a joint editor of highly regarded book on the political economy of India. He has served on the Editorial Board of The Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. He has also published numerous articles in non-academic publications on the politics of India and given numerous public addresses on Indian politics. Published fiction in Hindi, translated into Punjabi, Bengali and English.

He is an activist against imperialism, capitalism, wars of aggression, racism, and oppression of religious minorities. In 1968 he was deported from the US and has had his Indian passport cancelled for his critism of Indira Candhi's dictatorship. In Canada, Hari has been involved in the formation of Indian Peoples’ Association in North America, Canadian Farmworkers’ Union, BC Organization to Fight Racism, and South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy.

Su Zhiliang

Su Zhiliang will be speaking at the Orpheum Theatre at 7pm on Friday June 23.

Su Zhiliang is dean and head of the History Department of Shanghai Teachers' University. Professor Su is also the founder and director of the Chinese Comfort Women Research Centre. His research confirmed that Chinese "Comfort Women" forcibly recruited by Japanese aggressors during the WWII exceeded 200,000 and that as many as 22 provinces and cities in China had Japanese "comfort centers". Professor Su's work also revealed that most of the former Chinese "comfort women" lived under devastating conditions. He thus started the Chinese "Comfort Women Relief Fund" to help those in need.

As an internationally renowned advocate for these woman, Su was a member of the International Organizing Committee members of the International Women's Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery held in 2000 in Tokyo and led the delegation from China to attend this "history-breaking" event.

He is also a member of the writing team of the history textbook, Modern History on the East Asia, a jointly written volume composed by historians and peacemakers from China, Korea and Japan in 2005.

Zool Suleman

Zool is an Immigration Lawyer and will speak on the experiences of racially profiled persons and the effects of Canada Anti Terrorism Act, Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Safe Third Country Agreement on their lives. He will also discuss what can be done and what is happening to counter related injustices.

Suh Sung

Imprisoned for 19 years, Suh was an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, and survivor of torture. In 1995, he was a recipient of the Tada Yoko Human Rights Award. Suh graduated from Tokyo University of Eduction in 1968 and did graduate studies at Seoul National University where he became active in the early democracy movement. In the spring of 1971, the Korean military police abducted him and his brother and falsely charged him with being part of a "campus spy ring." In 1973, Amnesty International designated Suh a prisoner of conscience. The overthrow of the repressive regime in Korea in the late 1980s finally led to his release in 1990.

His autobiography, Unbroken Spirits: Nineteen Years in South Korea's Gulag (Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2001) was published in English in 2001. One of the most active and famous human rights campaigner in East Asia today, Suh is currently Director of Korea Studies, Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto and is the co-convener of the International Symposium on Human Rights and Peace in East Asia.

Itrath Syed

Itrath is a Muslim human rights and anti war activist, a past NDP federal candidate, and a Masters student in Women Studies at UBC. Itrath will speak about the experience of racial profiling and its effect upon the Muslim community.

Sid Chow Tan

Sid Chow Tan is the grandson of Chow Gim (Norman) Tan, a head-tax payer, and Wong Nooy, who was separated from Norman for a quarter century due to exclusion. He has been involved with Chinese head-tax/exclusion redress for over two decades, fisrt as a videographer and now as a community organiser. Currently, he serves as a national director of the Chinese Candian National Council and a founding director of Association of Chinese Canadian for Equality and Solidarity Society (ACCESS) and Community Media Education Society. Sid also
serves as a director of the Firehall Arts Centre, ), BC Environmental Network Educational Foundation, the Environmental Fund of BC and is active with ICTV Independent Community Television Co-operative in Vancouver and Victoria.

Hiromichi Umebayashi

A PhD holder in applied physics, Hiromichi is the founder and the President of the Peace Depot, a non-profit organization based in Yokohama, Japan. He also serves as the International Coordinator of the Pacific Campaign for Disarmament and Security (PCDS), a Pacific regional network for disarmament, the Editor-in-Chief of Nuclear Weapon and Nuclear Test Monitor, a bi-weekly Japanese publication which covers regional security and nuclear issues, a member of the Middle Powers Initiative (MPI) International Steering Committee, and the East Asian Coordinator of the Parliamentarian Network for Nuclear Disarmament (PNND).

He is known as one of the key leaders of the well-known 1972 massive civil movement in Japan to resist the transportation of the U.S. Army tanks from the U.S. Army Sagami Depot, Japan to the Vietnam War field. The resistance successfully stopped the tank transportation for 100 days. He also chaired the National Movement Against the Deployment of US Cruise Missile Tomahawk in 1983 -- 1987.

He is the author of many books, including The US Forces Japan (an Iwanami Shinsho), Nuclear Disarmament in 21st Century (Co-author), Regional Security in Northeast Asia -- From the Rule of US Forces to Rule of Law (Co-author), A Northeast Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free-Zone, and a frequent contributor to major progressive Japanese periodicals, including Sekai, Gunshuku, and Ronza.

Patti Willis

Patti Willis has served as the Resource Coordinator for the Pacific Campaign for Disarmament & Security (PCDS) since the mid-1980s. She holds a BA in Philosophy and a MA in Peace Studies. She has written numerous backgrounders and articles on Asia-Pacific peace issues, attended conferences and workshops around the Asia-Pacific over the past 20 years and has been active in many local British Columbia peace initiatives, including the Nanoose Conversion Campaign.

Lois Wilson

An author, minister and internationally-known authority on human rights issues, Lois was the first woman Moderator of the United Church of Canada. Lois earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Divinity from United College in Winnipeg. She has also received numerous honorary degrees in Divinity and Laws from universities and colleges across Canada and in the United States.

She was ordained a United Church minister in 1965. From 1976-79, she served as the first woman President of the Canadian Council of Churches and from 1980-82 as the Moderator of the United Church of Canada. From 1983-91, she was the first Canadian President of the World Council of Churches, during which time she worked extensively around the world on human rights issues.

Lois has authored numerous articles and five books. Her expertise on human rights issues has seen her serve as advisory board member (1978-88) with Amnesty International; with the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security (1984-88); 1997-98, as chair of the board of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development. In 1985, she was awarded the Pearson Peace Prize by the United Nations Association in Canada. That same year, she was awarded the World Federalists Peace Award, and has also served as President of the World Federalists (Canada). In 1984, Lois was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Bob Wing

Bob Wing has been an activist, writer and editor in national and international struggles, especially racial justice struggles, since 1968. He is one of the founders and leaders of United for Peace and Justice, the nationwide antiwar coalition of more than 1,200 organizations known for its massive demonstrations in New York City and elsewhere. He was also the founding editor of the antiwar newspaper War Times/Tiempo de Guerras and of ColorLines, a national magazine of race, culture and organizing.

In 1969, Wing participated in the Third World Strike that led to the formation of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He later taught in that department and briefly chaired the Asian American Studies program. A Chinese American, Wing was part of the first wave of Asian American activism in the late 1960s and a participant in the seminal radical organizing efforts in San Francisco Chinatown in the early 1970s. Since then he has been immersed in some of the most intense and conscious efforts to theorize and to build multi-racial unity and to connect issues of war, racism and politics.

Over the years, Wing has helped start and lead such groups as the Third World Coalition Against the Vietnam War, the National Committee to Overturn the Bakke Decision, the National Anti-Racist Organizing Committee, and, most recently United for Peace and Justice. He has also been active in numerous political education efforts. Wing is a board member of CAAAV-Organizing Asian Communities.

He has written extensively on issues of racial formation and racial justice, Iraq and the “war on terrorism,” elections, Asian American history and the Asian American movement, Mexico, Palestine, sports and the history of his family's six generations in the U.S.

Some of his essays are: The Structure of White Supremacy and Election 2000 and 2004, The Color of Abu Ghraib, War, Racism and United Fronts in the Post 9/11 Era, Crossing Race and Nationality: the Racial Formation of Asian Americans, and Educate to Liberate: Multiculturalism and the Struggle for Ethnic Studies.