Foreign Minister Kamikawa Urges Foreign Minister Wang Yi To Ensure The Safety Of Japanese Citizens In China

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. (Source: Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

JAKARTA - Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa urged China to take steps to ensure the safety of its citizens, especially children in the country, when meeting his team Wang Yi.

The meeting of the two top diplomats in New York, United States on Monday was held after the stabbing that killed a Japanese school boy in China's Shenzhen City last week.

Foreign Minister Kamikawa told reporters she had asked Beijing to provide in-depth information about the incident to Tokyo, as well as crack down on anti-Japan social networks and other online uploads.

Menteri Kamikawa menekankan perlunya tindakan terhadap komentar-komentan media sosial tersebut, karena komentar-komentan itu "berkaitan langsung dengan keselamanan anak-anak" dan "sama sekali tidak dapat ditoleran," melansir Kyodo News 24 September.

He added that China should make more efforts to remove barriers that hinder better exchanges between the two countries, according to Japan's Foreign Ministry.

Citing Foreign Minister Wang's response, Foreign Minister Kamikawa said what happened in Shenzen was an "individual case that we also don't want to see" and Chinese authorities will handle it according to the law.

Foreign Minister Wang told Foreign Minister Kamikawa that Beijing will continue to protect all foreign nationals living in China and urged Tokyo to take a "calm and rational approach to the case, instead of politicizing and exaggerateing it," China's Foreign Ministry said.

Referring to hostile and inciting social media posts, ministry spokesman Lin Jian reiterated at a press conference Tuesday, China "does not teach its people to hate Japan."

Many Chinese citizens put flowers outside Shenzhen schools in mourning over the boy, expressed opposition to violence and called for lasting friendship between the people of the two countries, Lin said.

"We note that some people in Japan may link these individual cases to the so-called anti-Japan comments on Chinese social networks and they have exaggerated and exaggerated the risk of safety. Such statements are not in accordance with the facts," said Lin.

Previously, a student whose father was Japanese and his mother from China, was stabbed about 200 meters from the school gate on Wednesday morning last week. Injured in his stomach, he died on Thursday morning, according to the Japanese Government.

Local authorities have not disclosed the motive of the 44-year-old suspect who was successfully secured by the security forces.

On Monday, Japan's Senior Deputy Foreign Minister Yoshifumi Tsuge, who was sent to Beijing, strongly urged China to take concrete steps to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals during talks with its Deputy Foreign Minister Sun Weidong.

It is known that the two foreign ministers met for almost one hour on the sidelines of the annual high-level session of the UN General Assembly in New York, United States.