During a campaign speech in the Japanese city of Nara, an assassin shoots Shinzo Abe twice. The former prime minister is taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries. That's where he died. The perpetrator is said to have previously been a member of the Self-Defense Forces.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been shot dead. The 67-year-old was assassinated in the Japanese city of Nara and died shortly afterwards. Abe bled to death, a doctor at the city's University Hospital said.
The perpetrator is a 41-year-old Japanese man who was arrested at the scene. Tetsuya Yamagami fired twice at the former prime minister with a homemade gun. He said he wanted to kill him when he was arrested. The perpetrator is said to have been a member of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. According to media reports, he said he had "no grudges against Abe's political beliefs".
The two shots can be heard on video recordings. Dramatic scenes took place at the crime scene. Rescuers gave Abe a cardiac massage while he was lying on the street before he was taken to a hospital. The politician is said to have been conscious on the way to the hospital.
Abe served as Prime Minister of Japan from 2006 to 2007 and then from 2012 to 2020. He was the country's longest-serving prime minister. According to critics, Japan clearly moved to the right under him. The 67-year-old was one of the staunch advocates of a revision of the country's pacifist post-war constitution. In Article 9, Japan "forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes".
The attack in one of the safest countries in the world, which has extremely strict gun laws, caused a shock in Japan. "Violence against political activity is absolutely unacceptable," said a representative of the Japanese Communist Party, for which Abe's nationalist policies have always been a red rag.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was also dismayed. "I am shocked by the news that Shinzo Abe has been gunned down," the Greens politician said on Twitter. Baerbock is currently at the G20 foreign ministers meeting in Bali. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken also expressed deep sadness and concern there. "Our thoughts, our prayers are with him, with his family, with the people of Japan," Blinken said.
The attack happened shortly before elections to the upper house of parliament this Sunday. "It is an attack on parliamentary democracy and cannot be tolerated," said House Speaker Hiroyuki Hosoda. Abe's successor and party colleague Fumio Kishida condemned the attack "strongly". He had previously canceled an election campaign in northern Yamagata Prefecture and returned to his Tokyo headquarters by helicopter.
Abe believed that Japan's constitution was not that of an independent nation, having been imposed in 1946 by the occupying United States. His LDP party is expected to win a landslide victory in the upper house elections, after which the debate on amending the constitution could gain momentum.
Economically, Abe wanted to lead Japan out of decades of deflation and stagnation with his "Abenomics" economic policy of cheap money, debt-financed economic stimulus injections and the promise of structural reforms.
Admittedly, the number three in the world economy has meanwhile experienced the longest growth phase in years under Abe. He also boosted tourism, which brought a lot of money into the country before the corona pandemic. At the same time, however, "Abenomics" has led to the fact that profits have been distributed unequally in recent years, critics have complained. A third of all employees are without permanent employment.
