SNA (Tokyo) -- A father and
son have been held in police custody in Fukushima Prefecture for more than a
month and a half in response to their unauthorized activities to save pets,
especially cats and dogs, left behind by their owners in the wake of the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. Hiroshi Hoshi and his son Leo are now
scheduled for their first court appearance on March 27 in Fukushima City.
NGO Hoshi Family Animal Welfare was
created when Leo Hoshi, the son, suggested to his father that they should do
something to help the pets that were reportedly starving inside the Fukushima
“exclusion zone” in the weeks following the three reactor meltdowns.
Father and son made repeated trips
into the exclusion zone under various pretenses, established their animal
welfare NGO, solicited donations from the general public, and gathered
supporters for their cause.
When the SNA visited Leo Hoshi in
detention in the Fukushima City Police Station on March 8, he explained, “We wanted to do something to ease the pain
of those who had lost so much in the nuclear accident, and reuniting families
with their beloved pets was one thing we saw that we could do.”
The Fukushima police, however,
allegedly became increasingly annoyed with the Hoshi family’s continuous
entries into the exclusion zone without official authorization and were
ultimately determined to put a stop to it. On January 28 both Hiroshi and Leo
Hoshi were arrested at their Tokyo home and taken to separate holding
facilities in Fukushima Prefecture. The father has since been held in detention
in Nihonmatsu City and the son in Fukushima City.
After their investigation,
prosecutors laid the charges on February 19 of falsifying official documents
and entering the Fukushima exclusion zone without authorization against both
father and son. The pair was denied bail on account of the supposed possibility
that, should they be freed, they might attempt to destroy evidence or to flee
the authorities.
The Hoshi family and its supporters essentially admit that the
official charges are accurate, but they contest the need to enforce such laws
against activists whose goals are only to rescue needy animals and to bring
comfort to Fukushima evacuees. They point out that the
Japanese government itself made no effort at all on behalf of the animals and
house pets of Fukushima, and they argue that this lapse makes the Hoshi
family’s activities a necessity.
Shingetsu News Agency
*Petition: Free Hiroshi Hoshi and Leo Hoshi, Fukushima Animal Rescuers
http://www.change.org/petitions/free-hiroshi-hoshi-and-leo-hoshi-fukushima-animal-rescuers
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