Hundreds of people commemorate former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the first anniversary of his assassination

July 8 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Hundreds of people have begun to march this Saturday in front of the memorial in memory of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during the first anniversary of his assassination while he gave a campaign speech in the city of Nara, in the west of the country, an unprecedented assassination in national politics since 1936.

The event began this morning with a service at the Zojoji temple featuring Abe’s widow, Akie, as well as the country’s current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, and the secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that Abe chaired in his day, Motegi Toshimitsu.

After the official commemoration, the population has begun to parade before the memorial to lay flowers in memory of the former Japanese prime minister, whose death sparked a political scandal with the controversial Unification Church as its epicenter.

Abe’s assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, accused the former prime minister of maintaining links with this religious organization — of South Korean origin but integrated into Japan since 1968 precisely with the support of Abe’s grandfather, the then head of government, Nobusuke Kishi — to the one that he blamed for having defrauded his mother.

Driven for this reason, Yamagami fired two point-blank shots at Abe in the middle of a rally on July 8, 2022 with a homemade shotgun. The second caused his death.

Faced with the collapse of his popularity due to these revelations, Prime Minister Kishida ordered the expulsion of any minister linked to this organization while the Parliament of Japan enacted a law to prohibit any organization that solicits donations with malicious intent.

A year later, and despite these measures, Abe’s death continues to give rise to political tensions as Kishida has declared his intention to hold a state funeral for the former prime minister at some point, something that Japanese law does not contemplate. given that he had left office before his death and involves an estimated cost of around eight million euros for an event that critics of the current president dispute as an attempt to win over the cordiality of conservative elements in his party.