Japan Press Weekly

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2015 November 4 - 10 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Symposium on elimination of sexual violence held in Okinawa

A symposium on elimination of sexual violence took place on November 7 in Naha City, Okinawa Prefecture.

Takazato Suzuyo, who heads the Rape Emergency Intervention Counseling Center Okinawa, gave the keynote address. She said that women in Okinawa have been exposed to the danger of being raped by U.S. military personnel and that they have been raising their voice in protest over this situation. Takazato stressed that the minimum requirement for a society to free itself from sexual abuse is to avoid taking any path towards war and that the enactment of the war legislation goes against this requirement.

After the address, Takazato served as a panelist for a panel discussion on the theme, “Armed forces, military bases, and sexual assaults” along with Bukkyo University Professor Wakao Noriko and psychiatrist Takeshita Sayoko. Wakao said that rightists in Japan are still trying to justify the former Japanese military’s sexual abuses during the past war. Takeshita underscored the need to have empathy for others’ sufferings.

Japanese Communist Party members of the House of Representatives Saito Kazuko and Ikeuchi Saori, Social Democratic Party lawmaker Fukushima Mizuho, and independent Upper House member Itokazu Keiko took part in the symposium.