Massive Rally Set for June in Okinawa to Protest U.S. Base-Linked Crime

Naha, Okinawa Pref., May 22 (Jiji Press)--A suprapartisan organization comprising political parties, companies and civic groups opposing the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma air station within Okinawa Prefecture decided at a meeting Sunday to hold a massive rally to protest against the murder of a local woman believed to be committed by a former Marine. The rally, expected to be joined by tens of thousands of people, will be organized as early as next month to denounce the latest crime involving U.S. base personnel and call for the reduction of U.S. bases in the southern prefecture, which hosts the bulk of bases of U.S. forces in Japan, the organization, called All Okinawa Kaigi, said. Emerging from the meeting in Naha, Okinawa's capital, Susumu Inamine, cohead of the organization and mayor of Nago, where the Japanese government plans to build a replacement facility for the Futenma base in Ginowan, told reporters that such an incident happens because there are U.S. bases. "We must lodge a protest against the brutal act," he stressed. In the incident, the 20-year-old woman from the city of Uruma was killed probably after being raped, and her body was dumped in the woods. Kenneth Shinzato, a 32-year-old U.S. base worker who was a Marine, was arrested on charges of abandoning the body. All Okinawa Kaigi also decided to call on some 3,000 people to gather around the U.S. Air Force's Kadena base on Wednesday, one day ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama's arrival in Japan to attend the two-day Group of Seven summit in central Japan. In a related development Sunday, around 1,200 people gathered in front of the gate of Camp Zukeran, a key U.S. base in Okinawa, to call for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the prefecture. At the outset of the rally, the participants offered silent prayers for the murdered woman. In Okinawa, some 85,000 demonstrators demanded a review of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement in the wake of the rape of a girl by three U.S. servicemen in 1995. In 2012, 101,000 people took part in a rally to protest the deployment of the Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft to the Futenma base. END