Free the Peace Boat 13!

Any

time the world stages a big event these days, be it the Olympic games, a G-7 summit, a World Bank confab or a seminar on global warming, there is guaranteed to be a raucous cadre of demonstrators protesting something. That something usually falls under the "anti-globalization" umbrella. Where athletes, diplomats, politicians, bankers and journalists tread, protesters are sure to follow.

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The World Cup, then, repeatedly billed as the world's most popular sporting spectacle, would seem a logical stage for huge protests. One would think even FIFA, the organization that puts on this sporting show, is mired in enough controversy to itself be the target of critics. With billions of people watching the games on TV around the globe, 32 nations sending teams and thousands of fans discovering their inner patriots and painting themselves silly with their national colors, the protesters must be having a field day, right?

Er, not exactly.

In Japan, it's hard to find any protesters at all. I found 13.

They were quietly huddled next to a fence along the pedestrian path from the Urawa Misono train station to the Saitama stadium, where host Japan and Belgium fought to a 2-2 draw on Tuesday night. From one of Japan's few non-government organizations, this one called Peace Boat, the activists, who frankly weren't being very active, were shaking home-made cardboard boxes with a few coins inside. They were collecting donations to send to Omar, an Afghanistan-based organization that is helping to clear land mines in that war-ravaged country. A mere 100 yen (about 80 U.S. cents) would clear one square meter of minefields, according to Sachiko Matsumoto, one of the Peace Boat members.

"They say this World Cup is about bringing the world together, but already people are forgetting about the Afghanistan war," she said.

The 13 Peace Boat members assembled near the stadium at 3 p.m. Then the police came. "At about 10 minutes after 3," another Peace Boat member, Yota Nomura, said with a sigh. "They were very nice, but they told us we have to leave because they are afraid if any crowds gather around us, it might cause a problem. You know, they are worried about hooligans."

The Peace Boat 13 were disappointed, but they weren't particularly agitated either. Among the crowd of fans, with their brightly colored soccer costumes, painted faces and huge national flags, the mild-mannered activists caused not a stir. Hardly anyone noticed them. They shook their cardboard boxes. It was easy to count the money inside. They had collected 3000 yen (about $25). It's not enough to accomplish their goal, which is to clear mines from enough land in Afghanistan to build a soccer field for children. "We'll try again at another game," Matsumoto said. Then she and the 12 others gathered their signs and their pamphlets and their cardboard boxes and quietly left, ending, without a fight, one of the only episodes of political activism that's been spotted at this World Cup.