Tokyo has urged Beijing to “ensure the safety of Japanese residents in China” after a wave of telephone harassment targeting businesses in Japan sparked by the controversial discharge of treated wastewater from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
While Japan says that the release of the treated water is safe — a view backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency — China has staunchly opposed it and banned all Japanese seafood imports, saying it contaminates the ocean.
The Japanese government yesterday published new data showing waters off Fukushima continued to post radioactivity levels well within safe limits.
Photo: Reuters
Calls from China began flooding Japanese businesses from Thursday, when Tokyo Electric Power Co Holdings (TEPCO) started releasing water used to cool the stricken nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Japanese businesses and groups, ranging from a concert hall in Tokyo to an aquarium in northern Iwate, reported that they had started receiving so many calls from Chinese speakers that they had difficulty conducting normal operations.
Japanese Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau Director-General Hiroyuki Namazu voiced his regret about the calls and told senior officials at the Chinese embassy in Tokyo to call for calm in China, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement late on Saturday.
Similar incidents have also occurred in China against Japanese facilities, Namazu told Chinese embassy officials, the statement said.
“We strongly urge the Chinese government to take appropriate measures, such as calling on its citizens to act calmly, and to take all possible measures to ensure the safety of Japanese residents in China and Japanese diplomatic missions in China,” the statement quoted him as saying.
Tokyo’s embassy in Beijing has separately urged its nationals in China to refrain from speaking loudly in Japanese.
A Fukushima businessperson told Kyodo News that his four restaurants and pastry shops received about 1,000 calls on Friday, mostly from China.
His businesses had to unplug their phones, Kyodo said.
Fukushima Mayor Hiroshi Kohata on Saturday wrote on Facebook that the city hall had received about 200 similar calls in two days, while local schools, restaurants and hotels also became targets.
“I will report this to the Japanese government and demand action,” he wrote in his post.
The Japanese Ministry of the Environment yesterday said that a fresh test of Fukushima coastal water showed no elevated levels of tritium.
The ministry added that the water samples did not show signs of gamma radiation that can come from other radioactive materials such as caesium.
TEPCO is releasing more than 500 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of wastewater used to cool Fukushima’s damaged reactors, three of which went into meltdown in March 2011 when they were hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami.
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