Gov't to suspend Coast Guard member over leak of collision video+

TOKYO, Dec. 21 Kyodo - The government plans to suspend a Japan Coast Guard member who posted online in November a video of collisions between Chinese and Japanese vessels near the disputed Senkaku Islands, government sources said Tuesday.

The government will announce the disciplinary action on Wednesday, the sources
said. How long the 43-year-old officer will be suspended was not immediately
known.
The navigator of the Uranami, a patrol boat of the Kobe Coast Guard Office,
posted the diplomatically sensitive footage on the YouTube video-sharing
website.
The government is also considering imposing a pay cut on Japan Coast Guard
Commandant Hisayasu Suzuki over the leak of the footage showing the Sept. 7
collisions between a Chinese trawler and Coast Guard patrol boats near the
Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, the sources said.
Sumio Mabuchi, minister of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism, will
also give up part of his pay to take responsibility for the incident, they
said.
In November, the officer was questioned for days without arrest and told
investigators that he had leaked the video. The government has withheld the
video from the public, apparently out of concern not to enrage China.
The roughly 44-minute-long video, which was posted online in six clips on Nov.
4, was recorded by members of a Coast Guard office in Okinawa Prefecture during
the collisions. One of the clips showed the Chinese trawler slamming into a
Coast Guard patrol boat.
The Senkaku Islands are administered by Japan but claimed by China and Taiwan.
The subsequent arrest and detention of the trawler's captain pushed relations
between Japan and China to their lowest point in years.
==Kyodo