Okinawa outrage at police officers’ racist slurs used on protesters

Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga lodged a complaint with the prefectural police on Oct. 20 over racist language used by riot police fending off protesters at the construction site of controversial U.S. helipads.

He met with Okinawa prefectural police department head Katsushi Ikeda and urged him to provide adequate instructions to such officers at the scene after footage was uploaded onto a video website on Oct. 18.

Onaga expressed outrage on behalf of the prefecture Oct. 19, telling reporters, “We strongly resent the matter.”

The video captured the tense atmosphere of what is essentially the front line of the showdown between Okinawa and the central government near the Takae district of Higashi, Okinawa Prefecture.

A riot police officer is shown shouting at citizens grabbing fences set up outside the construction site, saying, “What the hell do you think you’re holding, idiot? You ‘dojin.’”

It is a derogatory term to refer to indigenous people.

According to the prefectural police department, the officer in question is in his 20s and had been dispatched to the site from the Osaka prefectural police.

Okinawa police said the officer has admitted making the remark. He was relieved of his duties in Okinawa and sent back to Osaka on the evening of Oct. 19.

Osaka police were scheduled to start their probe into the scandal on Oct. 20. A police department official said: “We will be considering punishments based on the results of the investigation.”

Another video, in which a separate riot police officer says “Shut up, ‘Shina-jin’,” was also posted on the site.

The derogatory term is used to describe Chinese people.

Okinawa police identified this officer as another member of Osaka prefectural police and had him removed from front line duties. He will also be sent back to Osaka once Okinawa police complete their investigation into his case.

Comprising officers from Tokyo, Osaka and four other prefectural police departments, the riot police force at the site is made up of about 100-200 officers taking turns to guard it.

Okinawa Prefecture continues to criticize the deployment of such a massive legion of riot cops as an excessive show of force by the central government.

“There is a complete lack of consideration toward the citizens of Okinawa Prefecture,” Onaga said of the police force in light of the latest incident.

Meanwhile, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said in a news conference on Oct. 19 that “it is highly regrettable that police officers made inappropriate remarks.”

However, he showed no signs of the government stopping the construction work. He said: “We will continue to make progress based on law.”

Shinichi Isa, 65, a researcher of modern Okinawan history, said: “There is history in Okinawa in which bureaucrats and police officers who came there from mainland Japan looked down on the people of Okinawa as ‘dojin’ before the war.

“That mentality links with the slaughtering of Okinawans and their forced suicides by Japanese soldiers during the Battle of Okinawa. That’s the sort of memory the word evokes.”

An official with the Osaka prefectural police department’s Security Administration Division said: “Inappropriate comments were made by our officers, despite us instructing them to act in a fair, neutral and respectful manner. We would like to thoroughly instruct our officers so something like this will never happen again.”

The National Police Agency on Oct. 19 gave strict orders to the metropolitan and prefectural police departments across the nation to give thorough instructions on ethics to their officers to prevent further inappropriate remarks.

Meanwhile, Osaka Governor Ichiro Matsui got himself in hot water for defending the Osaka riot police at the scene.

“I saw the online footage and even if the expression the officer used was inappropriate, I learned that cops with the Osaka prefectural police department were working very hard obeying orders and doing their tasks,” the governor wrote on his Twitter account on the evening of Oct. 19. “Good job working away from home.”

Many people were critical of the comment and objected to his remarks with their own tweets.

One Twitter user wrote, “He doesn’t get the core issue.”

(This article was written by Takufumi Yoshida and Go Katono.)