One Year On, Rally Demands Scrapping of Japan Security Laws

Tokyo, Sept. 19 (Jiji Press)--Citizens who oppose Japan's controversial national security laws demanded the legislation be scrapped, at a large-scale rally in front of the National Diet Building in Tokyo on Monday, exactly a year after the laws were enacted. Despite rain, about 23,000 people took part in the rally, according to the organizers. Participants raised banners and placards with messages including "No to War Laws" and "Protect Lives of SDF Personnel." The SDF stands for the Self-Defense Forces. "(The government) has started implementing (the laws) without fulfilling its accountability," said Mitsuhiro Hayashida, a 24-year-old graduate school student who formerly belonged to student group SEALDs. "The current government's response to the risks of SDF personnel losing their lives is too careless and sloppy." SEALDs, or Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy-s, disbanded in August after actively staging protests against the national security laws. In a major shift in Japan's exclusively defensive security posture that had been maintained since the end of World War II, the laws, which came into force this year, expand the roles the SDF can play overseas. They also allow Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense, or coming to the aid of an ally under military assault even when Japan itself is not attacked. "The image of the SDF will change if personnel use weapons in areas of conflict," Ren Takekoshi, a 24-year-old company worker from Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture, said. "I hope the SDF will return to its role of rescuing people's lives." Tomoko Yamauchi, 40, who joined the rally with her six-year-old daughter, said, "I don't want SDF personnel to kill somebody." The Japanese government will decide soon whether to assign new tasks based on the national security laws to the Ground SDF unit in Aomori, northeastern Japan, that will be dispatched to join U.N. peacekeeping operations in South Sudan in November. END