June 6, 2016
Japan’s Defense Minister Nakatani Gen and U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter on June 4 at a meeting in Singapore agreed to review the coverage of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) as a pillar in the new measures to prevent crimes by U.S. military personnel in Japan.
This move, however, will have little effect as it fails to address a broad range of privileged treatment given to the U.S. forces in Japan.
The SOFA provides U.S. servicemen, civilian employees, and their families in Japan with extraterritorial protections under which 80% of U.S. military-related crimes are not indicted. It defines civilian employee as “the civilian persons of United States nationality who are in the employ of, serving with, or accompanying the United States armed forces in Japan”.
The U.S. military’s privileged position is facing fierce public criticism after a civilian employee was arrested for killing a Japanese woman and abandoning her body in Okinawa. The U.S. military has tried to evade its responsibility for the crime by underscoring the fact that the offender was employed by a private company to work at U.S. bases in Okinawa.
The recent bilateral agreement is to exclude civilian workers from the SOFA protections. With this agreement, the two governments appeared to give the impression that they are making a serious effort to eliminate U.S. crimes by arguing that the agreement will have a crime deterrence effect. However, it is totally insufficient to eliminate crimes stemming from the presence of U.S. bases.
The National Police Agency’s data show that U.S. military personnel, civilian members, and their families committed 220 serious crimes between 1989 and 2015 in Japan of which only seven or 3% were caused by civilians. Crimes by servicemen accounted for 163 or 74% of the total.
The need now is a drastic revision of the SOFA and the removal of U.S. bases from Japan.
Past related articles:
> US military rape victim calls for SOFA revision [May 27 & 31, 2016]
> Serious crimes by US personnel occur more than once a month in Okinawa [May 26, 2016]
This move, however, will have little effect as it fails to address a broad range of privileged treatment given to the U.S. forces in Japan.
The SOFA provides U.S. servicemen, civilian employees, and their families in Japan with extraterritorial protections under which 80% of U.S. military-related crimes are not indicted. It defines civilian employee as “the civilian persons of United States nationality who are in the employ of, serving with, or accompanying the United States armed forces in Japan”.
The U.S. military’s privileged position is facing fierce public criticism after a civilian employee was arrested for killing a Japanese woman and abandoning her body in Okinawa. The U.S. military has tried to evade its responsibility for the crime by underscoring the fact that the offender was employed by a private company to work at U.S. bases in Okinawa.
The recent bilateral agreement is to exclude civilian workers from the SOFA protections. With this agreement, the two governments appeared to give the impression that they are making a serious effort to eliminate U.S. crimes by arguing that the agreement will have a crime deterrence effect. However, it is totally insufficient to eliminate crimes stemming from the presence of U.S. bases.
The National Police Agency’s data show that U.S. military personnel, civilian members, and their families committed 220 serious crimes between 1989 and 2015 in Japan of which only seven or 3% were caused by civilians. Crimes by servicemen accounted for 163 or 74% of the total.
The need now is a drastic revision of the SOFA and the removal of U.S. bases from Japan.
Past related articles:
> US military rape victim calls for SOFA revision [May 27 & 31, 2016]
> Serious crimes by US personnel occur more than once a month in Okinawa [May 26, 2016]
