Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday urged China to rein in a barrage of harassing phone calls and slammed incidents of rock-throwing at Japanese schools and its embassy in Beijing, following Tokyo¡¯s decision last week to release treated water from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.
¡°There have been numerous harassing phone calls thought to have originated in China, and instances of stones being thrown at the Japanese Embassy and Japanese schools¡± in China, Kishida told reporters. ¡°I must say that these are regrettable.¡±
Kishida noted Japan¡¯s decision earlier Monday to summon China¡¯s ambassador, with the Japanese government ¡°strongly urging him to call on Chinese people to act in a calmly and responsibly.¡±
The prime minister also pointed to what he said was a highly evaluated process for releasing the treated water.
¡°Even since the start of the discharge, the United States, for example, has expressed its satisfaction with Japan¡¯s safe, transparent and science-based process,¡± Kishida said. ¡°In this context, we would like to convey to the Chinese government these voices of the international community.¡±
Japan began discharging treated water that had been used to cool nuclear reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 plant on Thursday, a move that stoked anger in China, which stunned officials in Tokyo by imposing a blanket ban on seafood imports from Japan the following day.
The Environment Ministry and officials in Fukushima Prefecture said Sunday that separate tests of seawater taken Friday near the wrecked Fukushima plant had not found detectable levels of radioactivity.
Japanese officials earlier in the day urged Beijing not to escalate the situation.
The government¡¯s top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, said during a news conference earlier Monday that the calls ¡ª which were made to businesses, schools and government offices in Japan ¡ª were worrisome.
Many of those calls, which sometimes numbered in the hundreds for certain targets, had the country code 86 for China, local media reported, with callers often attempting to complain about the water release in broken Japanese and English and apparent Chinese.
¡°We call on the Chinese side to act calmly and appropriately, and to take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of Japanese residents in China,¡± Matsuno said.
The calls and rock-throwing incidents prompted Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Masataka Okano to summon China¡¯s ambassador to Japan, Wu Jianghao, to convey concerns over the incidents of harassment, which Okano said have continued since Thursday.
Okano reiterated Matsuno¡¯s concerns, demanding that the Chinese government ¡°take all possible measures to prevent the situation from escalating.¡±
¡°We also strongly urge that accurate information be provided about the ALPS-treated water, rather than unnecessarily raising people¡¯s concerns by providing...
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.