People line up holding signs and banners outside the Diet building in Tokyo’s Nagatacho district on Wednesday, April 13, protesting against the government’s release of heavily redacted documents concerning the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks.
As deliberations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement are expected to resume in the Diet, citizens’ groups gathered in Tokyo’s Nagatacho district on Wednesday, April 13, urging the government to disclose the details of the TPP negotiations.
Citizens and farmers, angered by the government which presented heavily redacted documents concerning the negotiations, stood outside the Diet building, calling for thorough debate on the issue.
As many as 200 people participated in the rally hastily planned by citizens’ groups including Stop TPP!!, although the notice was released as late as Tuesday evening. They put up copies of the redacted documents along with signs and banners criticizing the government for hiding information.
Kenjiro Takeyama, 86, former rice farmer of Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, said his hometown was rapidly depopulated because of the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and fears over the TPP. “The government doesn’t understand the suffering of rural villages,” said Takeyama, who now lives in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward. “How do they dare present such redacted documents? We can’t expect proper debate to be made at the Diet with these documents.”
Shoko Uchida, director general of a nonprofit organization Pacific Asia Resource Center who specializes in the TPP talks, said the government does not take the citizens’ voices seriously. “Let us make the Diet move by raising our voices strongly,” Uchida said to demonstrators.
The group plans to continue rallying every Wednesday calling for information disclosure, in addition to demonstrations outside the Prime Minister’s Office on the first Tuesday of every month.