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Police say rumors of foreign looters in Hiroshima unfounded

by

Staff Writer

OSAKA – The Hiroshima Prefectural Police said Wednesday they had no information to substantiate online rumors that foreigners were burglarizing houses in areas of the city hit hardest by last week’s deadly mudslides.

No suspects had been arrested on suspicion of burglarizing, as of Tuesday. However, the police said that due to the rumors, they were beefing up patrols in the affected areas.

Rumors about foreign burglars began circulating on Twitter and social media sites that espouse right-wing and often xenophobic views, soon after the heavy rains hit parts of the city on Aug. 20, leaving 70 people dead in mudslides and forcing about 1,300 people from their homes.

According to the prefectural police website, there has been at least one possible phone scam in which a mudslide victim received a call around last Friday from a person claiming to represent a local bank and asking for a donation for the victims. The caller hung up when asked for confirmation of his identity, police said.

On Monday, following reports of fake police and city officials visiting homes and asking for cash donations, police warned residents to be on guard and confirm the identity of anyone requesting donations.

On Saturday, Kyodo News reported that a 73-year-old man returned to his damaged home after a couple of days and discovered it had been vandalized.

Unfounded rumors on social media of a spike in foreign crime appeared following the March 2011 quake and tsunami in Tohoku, forcing police and other officials to warn against false reports. There were also false rumors of a wave of crime by foreigners in Kobe following the 1995 earthquake.

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  • Tando

    I am sorry to say that, but the way the article is structured, one could think that suspected foreigners in the upper part of the article are also the perpetrators of offenses in the second half of the article. I would like to emphasize that defrauding people like the “Ore ore scam”, is a Japanese speciality.

  • nanka

    Reading this profound and objective article, I am reassured of the fact, that Japanese never would commit crimes, so all kind of crimes must have been commited by foreingers. This is, why Japan is such a great country, which needs no prisons at all, because all criminals are just sent back to their respective homelands…

    • Paul Johnny Lynn

      You’re either a troll or a racist moron.

      • nanka

        ..and you don’t recognise sarcasm, even if you nose is sticking in.. 8D

      • Paul Johnny Lynn

        Oscar Wilde you aint.

  • disqus_78r6IPfptX

    The most notorious example of rumours like these is the September 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, after which rumours that Korean residents were poisoning drinking water wells led to the massacre of up to 10,000 Koreans in Tokyo. In the old days rumours spread by word of mouth, but these days social media catalyze swifter developments. The fantasy of the dangerous foreign criminal is one of the chronic fetishes in Japan, maybe somewhat comparable to the Caucasian American fantasy of the dangerous young black male, or the illegal immigrant. I think the
    evidence is obviously that the Japanese are far more dangerous than foreigners. They are very emotional people prone to group-think, lacking a tradition of adversarial jurisprudence and critical journalism.

  • otisdelevator

    Just an observation. I find it ironic that posters are shouted down for saying many Japanese are racist, frequently having the racist torch turned back onto the poster.