Japan ex-PM Abe gunned down while making election campaign speech
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[July 08, 2022]
By Satoshi Sugiyama and Chang-Ran Kim
NARA, Japan (Reuters) - Former Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan's longest-serving leader, died on Friday
hours after he was shot while campaigning for a parliamentary election,
shocking a country in which political violence is rare and guns are
tightly controlled.
The shooter opened fire on Abe, 67, from behind as the former premier
addressed members of the public on a drab traffic island in the western
city of Nara. Japanese media reported that the weapon appeared to be a
homemade gun.
"This attack is an act of brutality that happened during the elections -
the very foundation of our democracy - and is absolutely unforgivable,"
said Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Abe's protege, struggling to keep his
emotions in check.
It was the first killing of a sitting or former Japanese leader since a
1936 coup attempt, when several figures including two ex-premiers were
assassinated.
Doctors were unable to revive Abe, who was taken to hospital in
cardiopulmonary arrest and showing no vital signs. He was declared dead
at 5:03 p.m. (0803 GMT), about five and a half hours after being shot.
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He bled to death from deep wounds to the heart and the right side of his
neck, despite receiving more than 100 units of blood in transfusions
over four hours, Hidetada Fukushima, the professor in charge of
emergency medicine at Nara Medical University Hospital, told a televised
news conference.
Police said a 41-year-old man suspected of carrying out the shooting had
been arrested. NHK quoted the suspect, identified as Tetsuya Yamagami,
as telling police he was dissatisfied with Abe and wanted to kill him.
The suspect told police he had made multiple handmade explosives and
guns in the past, NHK said.
BANG AND THEN SMOKE
Abe was making a campaign speech outside a train station when two shots
rang out. Security officials were then seen tackling a man in a grey
T-shirt and beige trousers.
"There was a loud bang and then smoke," businessman Makoto Ichikawa, who
was at the scene, told Reuters.
"The first shot, no one knew what was going on, but after the second
shot, what looked like special police tackled him."
Kyodo news service published a photograph of Abe lying face-up on the
street by a guardrail, blood on his white shirt. People were crowded
around him, one administering heart massage.
Later in the day, members of the public laid flowers near the spot where
Abe fell.
Senior Japanese politicians are accompanied by armed security agents but
often get close to the public, especially during political campaigns
when they make roadside speeches and shake hands with passersby.
Political violence is rare in post-war Japan. In 2007, the mayor of
Nagasaki was shot and killed by a yakuza gangster. The head of the Japan
Socialist Party was assassinated during a speech in 1960 by a right-wing
youth with a samurai short sword. A few other prominent politicians have
been attacked but not injured.
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Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attends the APEC Economic Leaders'
Meeting in Danang, Vietnam November 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jorge
Silva/File Photo
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Police said the suspected shooter was a resident of
Nara. Media said he had served in Japan's military for three years
until 2005.
Abe served two terms as prime minister, stepping down in 2020 citing
ill health. But he remained a dominant presence over the ruling
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), controlling one of its major
factions.
Kishida, who came to power last year, had been hoping to use the
election to emerge from Abe's shadow and define his premiership,
analysts have said. Kishida suspended his election campaign after
the shooting. All main political parties condemned the attack.
'VERY, VERY SAD'
Speaking on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in Indonesia, U.S.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the assassination of Abe
"shocking" and "profoundly disturbing" and described him as a leader
of great vision.
The United States is Japan's most important ally.
Similar messages of sympathy and shock poured in from around the
world following news of Abe's death, including from neighbouring
Taiwan, China and Russia, as well as from across Asia, Europe and
the United States.
The yen rose and Japan's Nikkei index fell on news of the shooting,
partially driven by a knee-jerk flight to safety.
Abe is best known for his “Abenomics” policy of aggressive monetary
easing and fiscal spending.
He also bolstered defence spending after years of declines and
expanded the military’s ability to project power abroad.
In a historic shift in 2014, his government reinterpreted the
postwar, pacifist constitution to allow troops to fight overseas for
the first time since World War Two.
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The following year, legislation ended a ban on exercising the right
of collective self-defence, or defending a friendly country under
attack.
Abe, however, never achieved his goal of revising the U.S.-drafted
constitution by writing the Self-Defense Forces, as Japan’s military
is known, into the pacifist Article 9.
Abe first took office in 2006 as Japan’s youngest prime minister
since World War Two. After a year plagued by political scandals,
voter outrage at lost pension records, and an election drubbing for
his ruling party, Abe quit citing ill health.
He became prime minister again in 2012.
Abe hailed from a wealthy political family that included a foreign
minister father and a grandfather who served as premier.
(Reporting by Satoshi Sugiyama in Nara, Chang-Ran Kim in Tokyo;
Additional reporting by Reuters staff; Writing by Robert Birsel and
Hugh Lawson; Editing by William Mallard and Peter Graff)
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