Tokyo/Beijing, Sep 24 (EFE).- Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa called on her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi to guarantee the safety of Japanese residents in China and combat hate speech on social media, following last week’s murder of a Japanese child in Shenzhen.
Kamikawa conveyed this request to the Chinese foreign minister during a meeting held in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations Assembly.
The Japanese foreign minister asked Chinese authorities for more explanations on the incident, and demanded measures to prevent “comments that could directly affect the safety of children from spreading on social media,” Japan’s foreign office reported in a statement.
Kamikawa told Wang she didn’t want the incident to “be an obstacle to relations between the two countries,” which have cooled recently following Chinese military maneuvers around Japanese territory and Beijing’s rapprochement with Moscow following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Wang said he promised Kamikawa that Beijing would prosecute the attack on the Japanese minor “in accordance with the law” and that it “will protect the safety of all foreign citizens in China as it always does,” the country’s foreign ministry said.
The minister also asked Japan to “be calm” when dealing with this matter, as well as to do so “rationally and without politicizing or exaggerating it.”
The boy, a student at the Japanese School in Shenzhen, was attacked Wednesday on his way to class, the date commemorating the beginning of the Japanese invasion of China in 1931.
The attacker, a 44-year-old man with a criminal record, was arrested by local authorities.
This attack follows the one recorded in June in the Chinese city of Suzhou, where a Japanese mother and her son were injured by a knife while waiting for a school bus, and a Chinese citizen who stood between the victims and the attacker died trying to defend them.
Kamikawa and Wang also addressed the issue of the discharge of contaminated and treated water from the Fukushima plant into the Pacific.
It comes after Japan agreed to accept additional long-term monitoring of this measure in collaboration with China and the International Atomic Energy Agency, in exchange for Beijing lifting the veto it applied to the import of Japanese maritime products.
The Japanese foreign minister said the spill was based on “scientific reasons,” while Wang again called on Tokyo “to fulfill its commitments and avoid unnecessary problems” arising from the spill. EFE
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