A Japanese minister landed in hot water yesterday after saying a shocking school slaying by an 11-year-old girl was a sign that women have become more assertive in society.
"The number of lively females has increased in general in every society," disaster prevention minister Kiichi Inoue, 72, said in commenting on the context in which Tuesday's slaying of a 12-year-old girl by her 11-year-old female playmate could take place.
"Men have committed thoughtless, harsh acts but I think this is the first for a girl. Recently the difference between men and women is shrinking," he went on.
Satomi Mitarai, 12, died on Tuesday at the Okubo Elementary School in the southern Japan port city of Sasebo after being stabbed and slashed by her classmate, who has reportedly admitted to the killing.
Police have said the young attacker lashed out with a papercraft knife after being dubbed fat and ugly and a goody-goody in messages her classmate wrote on an Internet homepage they shared.
The minister's comments about gender equality drew harsh criticism from women's groups.
"By saying that this incident occurred because females are strong is just crazy," said Harumi Okazaki from the Women and Work Research Center in Tokyo.
"I think he's just making fun of women. I can't take it any other way. The comment itself is discriminatory," Okazaki said.
The top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said in a separate news conference that the minister's statement was inappropriate.
"I don't think the central argument is whether the accused is a male or female," Hosoda said.
The government has recently been forced to backtrack on a number of outlandish statements by apparently out of touch senior lawmakers. In June last year, senior Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Seiichi Ota was forced to apologize for saying that five university students arrested for gang-raping a woman were "fine as they are in good spirits."
Inoue used exactly the same term as Ota, who was commenting on Japan's falling birth rate -- genki -- which was controversial because it carries a positive connotation of health and vitality.
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
‘INCREDIBLY TROUBLESOME’: Hours after a judge questioned the legality of invoking a wartime power to deport immigrants, the president denied signing the proclamation The US on Friday said it was terminating the legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, giving them weeks to leave the country. US President Donald Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation campaign in US history and curb immigration, mainly from Latin American nations. The order affects about 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came to the US under a scheme launched in October 2022 by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, and expanded in January the following year. They would lose their legal protection 30 days after the US Department of Homeland Security’s order is published in the Federal
RSS