EGN NEWS DESK
Over 2,500 individuals staged a rally within the metropolis of Okinawa on Sunday to protest sexual assaults on native women by U.S. servicemen stationed within the prefecture of Okinawa.
They adopted a decision demanding that the Japanese and U.S. governments apologize and compensate the victims, present data promptly when such incidents happen, and revise the Japan-U.S. standing of forces settlement, which governs U.S. troops stationed in Japan.
“Sexual violence that tramples on the dignity of ladies and youngsters ought to by no means happen,” stated Junko Iraha, chief of an area residents’ group and a member of the rally’s organizing committee.
Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki stated, “I really feel keenly that we should be stricter and communicate louder concerning the state of affairs during which many residents of the prefecture are pressured to co-exist with U.S. navy bases amid nervousness.”
Sorane Sakihama, a 22-year-old faculty scholar who spoke as a consultant of younger individuals, requested, “Do now we have to be disadvantaged of our youth as a result of we had been born in Okinawa and there are bases?”
The rally was broadcast reside to different venues in Okinawa together with Ishigaki and Miyakojima, and likewise distributed on-line. Participants wore yellow garments and ribbons in honor of the mimosa flower, which symbolizes International Women’s Day.
It got here to mild in June this 12 months that an Okinawa prosecutors’ workplace had indicted Brennon Washington, who belongs to the U.S. Air Force’s Kadena base within the prefecture, on expenses of a sexual assault on a woman.
Authorities didn’t make the indictment public instantly. A sequence of sexual assaults by U.S. navy personnel in Okinawa have since been revealed, sparking anger amongst residents of the prefecture.
