国際ジャーナリスト組織「国境なき記者団」
「日本は首相とヤクザの関係を調査するジャーナリストの不審な転落事故を捜査しなければならない」と声明を発表。
安倍事務所の“火炎瓶騒動”を取材する記者が遭った転落事故について捜査を要請
国際ジャーナリスト組織「国境なき記者団(RSF)」が28日付で「日本は、首相とヤクザの関係を調査するジャーナリストの不審な転落事故を捜査しなければならない」との声明を出した。
火炎瓶騒動とは、1999年の市長選で、安倍事務所が支援候補を当選させるため、暴力団に対立候補の中傷ビラまきを依頼し、500万円の報酬を300万円に値切ったため、自宅に火炎瓶を投げ込まれたとされる事件だ。
2018/8/28 Reporters without borders
Japan must look into the suspicious fall of journalist investigating links between Prime Minister and mafia
Shunsuke Yamaoka, 59, founder of the Japanese-language investigation website Access Journal, was left unconscious on August 7th after a 20-step fall that gave him a fractured shoulder and 20 stitches in the forehead in the stairs of Tokyo's Shinjuku subway station. The incident costed Yamaoka a day in the hospital and more than a month of recovery. The journalist is convinced that his fall was not accidental.
The independent journalist, who investigated possible links between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Japanese mafia, claims that he has received numerous threatening letters and faced an attempted fire at his house over the past years. According to Yamaoka, the police refused to launch an investigation as "there is no surveillance camera covering the area" of the incident.
"Considering the subject that the journalist was covering, such an unnatural fall merits a serious investigation, which is clearly not being done right now" said Cedric Alviani, director of the East Asia office of Reporters Without Borders ( RSF). Alviani calls on the Shinjuku Police Station "to peel all the surveillance videos in the surrounding area, to call for witnesses to clear up the fall and to look into all the threats that the journalist received."
Since Nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to power in 2012, Japanese journalists have complained of a general climate of mistrust and hostility towards them, especially when they are dealing with the government.
Japan ranks 67th out of 180 in the Press Freedom Index 2018 established by RSF.