Japan’s top court backs Tokyo over US base construction in Okinawa
TOKYO: Japan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favour of the country’s government in a lawsuit, essentially backing a restart of construction on a controversial US military base on the southern island of Okinawa, local media reported.
The country’s top court upheld a lower court decision against Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga who protested against the new base being built in an environmentally sensitive area of the island.
The decision comes a week after the crash-landing of a US military Osprey aircraft off Nago City, where its five crew members were rescued. The accident fuelled local anger over the US military presence on the island. The US military then decided to resume Osprey flights on Monday, despite Okinawa’s strong demand that their helicopter-plane hybrids remain grounded.
In July, the Japanese government filed the lawsuit after Onaga revoked his predecessor’s approval for land reclamation work for the proposed new base, which is meant to take over from the current US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in a densely populated area of the island.
“I will never allow the construction of a new base to happen,” the governor said last week, according to local newspaper Asahi reported, following the top court’s decision not to conduct a public court hearing.
Onaga has said he would use every possible means to block the construction of a proposed base. The project could cost Japanese taxpayers more than 1 trillion yen ($8.5 billion), experts said.
The Okinawa governor has already refused to renew rock reef destruction permission related to the construction, which is set to expire in March.
Onaga won an overwhelming victory in the 2014 gubernatorial election and campaigned against the base, defeating the Tokyo-backed incumbent Hirokazu Nakaima. In December 2013, Nakaima approved the reclamation work, going against his election pledge to move the base off the island.
Tokyo and Washington agreed in 1996 to close the current Futenma base and move its operations to a new base in Nago, but fierce local opposition has prevented the project for two decades.