Tokyo governor: SDF can kill off terrorists in counterattack

Japanese Communist Party Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly members on December 3 demanded that the Tokyo Governor retract his remark justifying the Self-Defense Forces in Iraq to strike back against terrorist attacks by killing attackers.

JCP Yoshida Nobuo, Matsumura Tomoaki, and Shimizu Hideko handed a letter of protest to the vice-head of the governor's secretaries at the Metropolitan Government Office.

The JCP Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly members group in its written protest criticized Governor Ishihara Shintaro for encouraging Japanese troops to kill foreigners abroad, for the first time since the end of WWII, in violation of the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution.

Governor Ishihara made the remark on December 1st during a news conference held after the metropolitan government's map exercise for fighting against smallpox terrorism. Firmly supporting the SDF dispatch to Iraq, Ishihara stated, "If attacked in Iraq, the SDF can make a counterattack against the terrorists and wipe them out." He also expressed his negative view of the Constitution by saying, "It's unsound for the Constitution, which was unilaterally given by policymakers 60 years ago, to prevent an overseas deployment of the SDF." (end)