TOKYO // The beheading of two Japanese citizens by ISIL militants has fanned calls to allow Japan’s long-constrained military to conduct overseas rescue missions as part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push for a more muscular security posture.
However, advocates say Japan’s military faces big hurdles to acquiring the capacity to conduct such missions, while critics say sending troops overseas would increase the risk.
ISIL militants said on Sunday they had beheaded a second Japanese hostage, war reporter Kenji Goto, prompting Mr Abe to vow to step up humanitarian aid to the group’s opponents in the Middle East and bring the killers to justice.
In a video of the killing, the militant addresses Mr Abe and says the knife will not only slay Goto but also “cause carnage wherever your people are found”.
Mr Abe wants legislation to lift a ban on the military fighting overseas to help allies under attack. Known as collective self-defence, the change would be the biggest military policy shift since Japan’s armed forces were reassembled 60 years ago after its World War Two defeat.
Other proposed changes would also widen the scope for military participation in rescuing citizens abroad.
“The point is the need for a legal system so that we can protect our citizens properly,” former defence minister Yuriko Koike said. An internal paper for top government officials said cases like the ISIL crisis did not meet proposed conditions for Japan to send troops to join allies in combat. It dodged the question of whether planned legal changes would allow rescue missions in such cases, but a Japanese defence official said it would not.
If legal changes were made, he said, Japan lacked the military capability and necessary intelligence network to mount such missions.
After 10 Japanese hostages were killed by extremists at a gas complex in Algeria in 2013, Japan revised a law to allow its military to travel over land to bring freed hostages home from overseas. Previously, Japan’s pacifist legal limits meant they could only go as far as air or sea ports. Now some want to go further.
“There are voices questioning whether it is alright to just rely on the foreign country concerned or whether we don’t need to do anything, even if that country has asked us for cooperation,” ruling Liberal Democratic Party secretary general Sadakazu Tanigaki said on Sunday.
On the other side of the political fence, caution reigned.
“The Self-Defence Forces should never be dispatched [overseas]. That would only bring about a chain reaction of acts of terrorism and hatred,” said Seiji Mataichi, secretary general of the tiny Social Democratic Party.
* Reuters