International News Service,
PNIB NEWS, WORLD NEWS CENTRE,
Through, CNB, PNIB News India.
After the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, it is not surprising that countries like Japan, which follow a bulletless culture, today also have to take up arms for their security. Circumstances in the world are changing and the roots of intolerance seem to be tightening. China has come under the scanner of committing such scandals with the reprehensible intention of expanding on neighboring lands. His evil eye on his neighboring country Taiwan is like a hawk.
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated Friday on a street in western Japan by a gunman who opened fire on him from behind as he delivered a campaign speech — an attack that stunned a nation with some of the strictest gun control laws anywhere.
The 67-year-old Abe, who was Japan’s longest-serving leader when he resigned in 2020, collapsed bleeding and was airlifted to a nearby hospital in Nara, although he was not breathing and his heart had stopped. He was later pronounced dead after receiving massive blood transfusions, officials said.
A hearse carrying Abe’s body left the hospital early Saturday to head back to his home in Tokyo. Abe’s wife Akie lowered her head as the vehicle passed before a crowd of journalists.
Nara Medical University emergency department chief Hidetada Fukushima said Abe suffered major damage to his heart, along with two neck wounds that damaged an artery. He never regained his vital signs, Fukushima said.
The world reacted with horror and shock at the cold-blooded assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday. In a country which has virtually no gun violence, what made the crime even more unusual was the strange, seemingly homemade double-barreled weapon used by the shooter.
Abe was giving a campaign speech in the city of Nara, in southern Japan, when he was shot from behind at close range, hitting him in the neck and heart. The alleged gunman—named by local authorities as 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami—was photographed throwing a janky firearm to the ground before being tackled by security officials.
From images of the gun, captured by bystanders including a reporter for Japan’s public broadcaster NHK, experts immediately suspected that the gun was homemade. “The box-like device is wrapped in black tape and smoke can be seen coming from the muzzle. It’s certainly no standard shotgun,” a former detective for the Metropolitan Police Department firearms control division told The Daily Beast after reviewing photos.
Police at the shooting scene arrested Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, a former member of Japan’s navy, on suspicion of murder. Police said he used a gun that was obviously homemade — about 15 inches (40 centimeters) long — and they confiscated similar weapons and his personal computer when they raided his nearby one-room apartment.
Police said Yamagami was responding calmly to questions and had admitted to attacking Abe, telling investigators he had plotted to kill him because he believed rumors about the former leader’s connection to a certain organization that police did not identify.
Dramatic video from broadcaster NHK showed Abe standing and giving a speech outside a train station ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary election. As he raised his fist to make a point, two gunshots rang out, and he collapsed holding his chest, his shirt smeared with blood as security guards ran toward him. Guards then leapt onto the gunman, who was face down on the pavement, and a double-barreled weapon was seen nearby.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his Cabinet ministers hastily returned to Tokyo from campaign events elsewhere after the shooting, which he called “dastardly and barbaric.” He pledged that the election, which chooses members for Japan’s less-powerful upper house of parliament, would go on as planned.
“I use the harshest words to condemn (the act),” Kishida said, struggling to control his emotions. He said the government would review the security situation, but added that Abe had the highest protection.
Even though he was out of office, Abe was still highly influential in the governing Liberal Democratic Party and headed its largest faction, Seiwakai, but his ultra-nationalist views made him a divisive figure to many.
Opposition leaders condemned the attack as a challenge to Japan’s democracy. Kenta Izumi, head of the top opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, called it “an act of terrorism” and said it “tried to quash the freedom of speech ... actually causing a situation where (Abe’s) speech can never be heard again.”
In Tokyo, people stopped to buy extra editions of newspapers or watch TV coverage of the shooting. Flowers were placed at the shooting scene in Nara.
When he resigned as prime minister, Abe blamed a recurrence of the ulcerative colitis he’d had since he was a teenager. He said then it was difficult to leave many of his goals unfinished, especially his failure to resolve the issue of Japanese abducted years ago by North Korea, a territorial dispute with Russia, and a revision of Japan’s war-renouncing constitution.
That ultra-nationalism riled the Koreas and China, and his push to create what he saw as a more normal defense posture angered many Japanese. Abe failed to achieve his cherished goal of formally rewriting the U.S.-drafted pacifist constitution because of poor public support.
Loyalists said his legacy was a stronger U.S.-Japan relationship that was meant to bolster Japan’s defense capability. But Abe made enemies by forcing his defense goals and other contentious issues through parliament, despite strong public opposition.
Tributes to Abe poured in from world leaders, with many expressing shock and sorrow. U.S. President Joe Biden praised him, saying “his vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific will endure. Above all, he cared deeply about the Japanese people and dedicated his life to their service.“
On Saturday, Biden called Kishida and expressed outrage, sadness and deep condolences on the shooting death of Abe. Biden noted the importance of Abe’s legacy including through the establishment of the Quad meetings of Japan, the U.S., Australia and India. Biden voiced confidence in the strength of Japan’s democracy and the two leaders discussed how Abe’s legacy will live on as the two allies continue to defend peace and democracy, according to the White House.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose tenure from 2005-21 largely overlapped with Abe’s, said she was devastated by the “cowardly and vile assassination.” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared Saturday a day of national mourning for Abe, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted that he would remember him for “his collegiality & commitment to multilateralism.”
SACHIN MAITREYA,
Source:
World News Division,
PNIB NEWS INDIA.
Central News Bureau
New Delhi/ Karnataka