Prosecutors have indicted without arrest a former senior member of a civic group that campaigns against ethnic Korean residents in Japan on libel charges over his alleged hate speech last year, lawyers for a Korean school said Monday.
The prosecutors charged Hitoshi Nishimura, a former senior member of Zaitokukai, with defaming a pro-Pyongyang Korean school in Kyoto by saying via a loudspeaker in a park in April last year, "We must kick out (from Japan) a school that has kidnapped Japanese," while streaming his speech live on the internet.
The group's name, Zaitokukai, is short for Zainichi Tokken wo Yurusanai Shimin no Kai, which loosely translates as a society of citizens against granting privileges to Koreans in Japan. Its members were previously pressed with charges in connection with repeated hate speeches in 2009 against the Kyoto school.