Abe calls for sharing of info on suspicious people

May 29, 2019

Tokyo--Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday called for stepped up sharing of information about suspicious people to secure the safety of children on their way to and from school, in the wake of the previous day's stabbing rampage that targeted many children waiting for a school bus.

At a meeting of relevant cabinet ministers held at the prime minister's office, Abe vowed to make all-out efforts to ensure children's safety and directed the participants to make sure school commuting roads are safe and get the full picture on the stabbing spree.

"In addition to checking the safety of locations where children gather on their way to and from school, I want police officers to carry out intensive patrols and cooperate more closely with local residents to watch over children," Abe told the meeting.

He called for the creation of a system for sharing information about suspicious individuals obtained by the police and schools.

A total of 19 people, mostly elementary school children, were stabbed by a knife-wielding man in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, on Tuesday morning. An 11-year-old schoolgirl and a 39-year-old man died from stab wounds.

"I would like to sincerely offer my condolences to those who lost their lives in the attack, as well as my prayers for the quick recovery to those who suffered injuries," Abe said.

Those at the meeting included Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, education minister Masahiko Shibayama and National Public Safety Commission Chairman Junzo Yamamoto.

Speaking to a press conference after the meeting, Suga expressed the government's readiness to further strengthen measures aimed at protecting schoolchildren, based on an anticrime plan drawn up by the government after the murder of an elementary school second-grade girl on her way home from school in the central

Japan city of Niigata in May last year.

At a different meeting on Wednesday, the secretaries-general and Diet affairs chiefs of Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, Komeito, agreed to call on the government to take every possible measure to secure the safety of children. Jiji Press