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EFFECTS OF THE JAPANESE POLICE AGENCY TARGETING FOREIGNERS--THEY BECOME AN EASY PATSY FOR DOMESTIC CRIMINALS:

Teens lie about fatal bashing, blame foreigners not bikers (Mainichi, May 3, 2004)
ADDITION: TRUCKER OVERSLEEPS, IS LATE FOR DELIVERY, CALLS POLICE AND BLAMES FOREIGNER GANG OF KIDNAPPING HIM (Mainichi, Dec 21, 2004)
ADDITION: MURDER SUSPECT TRIES TO BLAME CRIME ON "BLOND" MAN (Asahi, Aug 29, 2006)

As Michael Moore made clear in his movie BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, in America the bogeyman for crimes is the "young Black male"--i.e. a phenotype often (and automatically, even erroneously) seen as a criminal suspect.

In Japan the criminal bogeyman is becoming foreigners. Read the next articles and see for yourself.

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Teens lie about fatal bashing, blame foreigners not bikers
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20040503p2a00m0dm011000c.html

NISHIO, Aichi -- A group of teen-agers have recanted their story blaming a gang of foreigners for the fatal beating of a friend, admitting that the attack was actually carried out by Japanese bikers, police said Monday.

The three teens who survived the attack in which 16-year-old Tatsuya Soda died of injuries related to being clobbered with a bamboo staff said the bikers threatened to render them lame if they did not blame the assault on foreigners.

Police have launched a massive manhunt for the perpetrators of the attack, which took place on the grounds of Suwa Shrine.

Police said the four boys including Soda had been riding their motorbikes around Nishio in the early hours of Monday morning when members of a biker gang suddenly surrounded them.

The teens fled in a futile attempt to escape, but gang members soon cornered them in the shrine grounds.

Biker gang members unleashed a vicious attack on the boys, then fled.

One of the bikers smashed Soda in the chest with a bamboo sword. Soda was rushed to a hospital, but died early Monday after drowning on blood that seeped into his lungs after he was bashed.

Initially, the three teens who emerged relatively unscathed from the assault told the police they had been beaten by a group of five or six men who spoke a language other than Japanese.

However, conflicting stories led police to suspect the boys were lying. Further interrogation revealed that they had actually been beaten by Japanese bikers who ordered them to tell the police they were assaulted by foreigners.

The boys said the bikers threatened to stop them from ever walking again if they told investigators who had really attacked them. (Mainichi and wire reports, May 3, 2004)

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Racist teen biker mob collared over boy's lethal bashing
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20040505p2a00m0dm008000c.html


NAGOYA -- Eleven members of teen-ager biker gangs have been arrested for the fatal bashing of a boy they tried to blame on foreigners, police said.

Identities of the 11 arrested for inflicting bodily injury resulting in death cannot be released for legal reasons as they are all minors aged 16 or 17.

Three schoolboys are among the arrested.

All admit to the allegation that they gang-bashed 16-year-old Tatsuya Soda, who drowned on his own blood after it seeped into his lungs when he was battered in the chest with a bamboo sword.

Police said the 11 arrested boys and a number of other boys forming several biker gangs based in Nishio, Aichi Prefecture, chased after four boys on two other motorbikes in the early hours of Monday morning.

Police said the bikers cornered the four boys in the grounds of Suwa Shrine in Nishio and started to gang bash them, killing Soda.

Gang members stole 1,500 yen in cash from another of the beaten boys. They then told them to tell the police they had been attacked by foreigners to divert suspicion from falling on their shoulders. The gang members told the battered boys they would face further attacks if they did not use the story about foreigners unleashing the attack.

One of the bashed boys knew at least some of the 11 other teens arrested for attacking him. (Mainichi Shimbun, May 5, 2004)

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Thankfullly the cops did their job and got the right perpetrators, this time. Arudou Debito in Sapporo


www.debito.org

UPDATE: TRUCKER OVERSLEEPS, IS LATE FOR DELIVERY, CALLS POLICE AND BLAMES FOREIGNER GANG OF KIDNAPPING HIM

More grist for the mill on how bad it's getting for foreigners in Japan. Quick comment afterwards.

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Truck driver screams 'foreigners abducted me' after he slept in
Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, Dec. 21, 2004
http://www12.mainichi.co.jp/news/mdn/search-news/919753/abducted-0-1.html

KOBE -- A truck driver fictitiously told police that foreigners abducted him after he took a nap on the job, officers said on Tuesday.

The 34-year-old driver, who works for a delivery company in Nagasaki Prefecture, was transporting goods from Toyama Prefecture to Kasai, Hyogo Prefecture, on Dec. 16.

He parked his truck at the Yashiro parking area on the Chugoku Expressway in Hyogo at about 4:45 a.m. and took a nap.

When he woke up, it was past 10 a.m., more than five hours after his scheduled arrival time at a transport firm in Kasai.

The driver called a police emergency line shortly before 11 a.m., saying, "Four foreigners abducted me for some five hours," according to police.

He then described how he was victimized. "They asked where an expressway bus stop was at about 5:30 a.m.," officers quoted the driver as telling them. "Someone covered my head with a paper bag from behind, and I was forced into a car."

Hyogo police mobilized about 30 officers to search for the four foreigners.

But they soon felt something was fishy as the driver was not injured at all despite him saying that he was kicked out of a moving car.

After officers grilled him, the driver confessed that he had lied in a bid to cover up his sleeping in. Police plan to send the case to prosecutors. (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, Dec. 21, 2004)
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Courtesy of David on The Community.
As Scott from the same place points out:
===========================================
> He parked his truck at the Yashiro parking area on the Chugoku Expressway in
> Hyogo at about 4:45 a.m. and took a nap.
>
> When he woke up, it was past 10 a.m., more than five hours after his scheduled
> arrival time at a transport firm in Kasai.


So in other words, he took a nap despite it ALREADY being just a few minutes
before his scheduled time (10am - 5 hours = 5am). Either he's a complete
idiot, or the article's wrong. Given his subsequent actions, I suspect the
former.
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This is what foreigner bashing without protections against it creates. An outlay of tax monies for thirty cops and four days. Arudou Debito in Sapporo


ASAHI AUGUST 29, 2006: MURDER SUSPECT TRIES TO BLAME CRIME ON "BLOND" MAN

It's quite a famous case up here in Hokkaido, where a kid from a broken family in Wakkanai, Japan's northernmost city, apparently tried to get his friend to help kill his mom.  It's a pretty sad case, covered assiduously by the Wide Shows of yet another example of Japan's decline in morals, and complicated (as far as this newsletter is concerned) by the following fact:

============== ARTICLE BEGINS ==================
Police arrest murdered hospital worker's son, friend
Mainichi Daily News, August 29, 2006
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20060829p2a00m0na001000c.html

Original Japanese at
http://www.mainichi-msn.co.jp/shakai/jiken/news/20060829k0000e040014000c.html

WAKKANAI, Hokkaido — Police investigating the murder of a hospital worker at her home here arrested her 16-year-old son and his 15-year-old friend on Tuesday on suspicion of murder, investigators said.

The two admitted to the allegations during questioning. "I was unhappy after my parents' divorce," the victim's son was quoted as telling investigators.

The two boys, whose names are being withheld under the Juvenile Law, conspired to stab the 46-year-old victim in the neck and chest several times at about 10 p.m. on Sunday after she came out of the bathroom at her home, investigators said. The knife used in the murder has not been found.

Local police began to question the youths immediately after they called a local fire station, reporting the incident and asking for an ambulance for the victim. They confessed to the murder after investigators noticed inconsistencies between their statements and the circumstances of the murder scene.

The victim's son had initially told investigators that he saw a man with blond hair running away from his home, and the first-floor living room appeared to have been ransacked. Investigators suspect that the two attempted to cover up their involvement.(emphasis added by blog admin)

The son had lived with her parents in Kanagawa Prefecture. However, after his parents divorced four years ago, the boy and his mother moved to Wakkanai, her hometown.

Shortly after news organizations reported the murder of his mother, rumors that he might have been involved in the case spread through his high school.

"He appeared gloomy. I often didn't know what he was thinking about," one of his classmates said.

The two suspects were classmates at a junior high school and later entered separate high schools. (Mainichi) August 29, 2006
============== ARTICLE ENDS ====================

Fortunately, the police saw through this.  But given the NPA's long history of targeting foreigners (got lots of links, but I'm not going to include them all in this already long-enough post), I'm happy that they didn't jump to conclusions (especially given the often-sour relationship between Japanese seaports and disembarking Russians, which I have also catalogued in great detail in the past).

The point I'm trying to make is this:  This is yet another attempt to pin Japanese crime on foreigners.  It didn't happen this time, but how many crimes in Japan which are suspected to be committed by "foreigners" are thusly red-herringed?

By the way, an interesting note about this article.  The original Japanese at
http://www.mainichi-msn.co.jp/shakai/jiken/news/20060829k0000e040014000c.html
does NOT mention the blond man at all.  It only says that the suspect saw "an unknown man" (mishiranu otoko) running away from the house's genkan.

Well, maybe both the media and the police are becoming more careful about how they investigate things nowadays.  Good.  Arudou Debito in Sapporo

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