By RYUICHI KITANO/ Senior Staff Writer
October 11, 2021 at 18:55 JST
Yukio Ubukata, a Lower House member of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
A Lower House member of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) incurred the wrath of the families of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea for saying none of the abductees are alive.
According to groups representing the families and their supporters, CDP lawmaker Yukio Ubukata, 73, a former journalist, made the inflammatory comments at a forum in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, on Sept. 23.
Members of the groups issued a statement in response on Oct. 11 demanding that Ubukata retract his statement and offer an apology, which he did soon after on Twitter that same day.
“I made an inappropriate remark,” Ubukata tweeted. “I retract the remark and offer an apology to all family members of the abduction victims as well as related people.”
According to the groups and other sources, Ubukata spoke at the forum about Megumi Yokota, a symbol of the Japanese abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.
“Nobody thinks she is still alive,” he said, according to the groups.
“None of the (ruling) Liberal Democratic Party’s lawmakers do, either,” he added. “If she were alive, (North Korea) would have returned her.”
A video of him making these remarks also surfaced on social media.
The groups admonished him for the controversial comments in their statement.
“Ubukata denies the Japanese government’s basic stance on this critical human rights issue that involves human lives, and he is sympathetic to North Korea’s claims,” it said.
They said the remarks constitute a “serious insult and blasphemy to families of abductees and their supporters, as well as the lives of the victims themselves.”
CDP Secretary-General Tetsuro Fukuyama and Yuko Mori, who heads the party’s headquarters on the issue of abduction, responded with an emergency statement that distanced the party from his comments.
They said his remarks were “completely at odds with the party’s thinking” and “deeply hurt families of the abductees and all people involved with resolving the abduction issue.”
The party said it has severely reprimanded Ubukata.
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