Japan Press Weekly

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2017 August 9 - 15 [POLITICS]

JCP Inoue stresses need to reveal hidden motives for ‘daily reports’ cover-up by SDF

At an off-session Diet committee meeting on August 10 on the cover-up of “daily reports” on Ground Self-Defense Force units engaged in the UN South Sudan PKO, Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Inoue Satoshi said that the reports were concealed most likely because they contain “inconvenient facts” for the government.

Inoue at the House of Councilors Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting referred to the fact that the SDF in July 2016 rejected an information disclosure request on the daily journals which stated that “battles” broke out in the South Sudanese capital city of Juba that month.

Inoue stressed that the Abe government in July 2016 was trying to assign new duties to SDF troops in South Sudan which caused controversy in the Diet. He mentioned that the then Defense Minister Nakatani Gen in Diet discussions described what was happening in Juba was an occasional shooting incident. The JCP lawmaker asserted that the SDF allegedly concealed the daily reports in order to hide the daily reports’ descriptions which contradict the Defense Minister’s remarks.

Inoue stated that although the Defense Ministry’s internal organization conducted a special investigation on the cover-up scandal, the investigation result does not touch on what triggered the concealment of the SDF data. He said that this was due to institutional limitations imposed on the probe. Stating that the Diet has a responsibility to determine whether there were hidden motives for the cover up leading to the scandal, Inoue demanded that former Defense Minister Inada Tomomi and other persons concerned testify before the Diet.

Past related articles:
> JCP Koike grills Abe over scandals of ‘Kake’ and cover-up of SDF’s ‘daily reports’ [July 26, 2017]
> JCP Kasai: PM Abe should dismiss defense minister [July 25, 2017]