According to an article published today by New York Times, a Japanese court sentenced two United States Navy sailors, Christopher Browning and Skyler Dozierwalker, for raping after they pleaded guilty to the rape of a woman on Okinawa last year. It was a cause that outraged local residents and forced the American military to impose a curfew on all its personnel in Japan. Okinawa is a peaceful tropical island located in the southwest of Japan and is the host to more than half of the approximately 50,000 US military personnel in Japan. The residents have long complained that the American presence brings crime as well as noise pollution and safety hazards. The two attacked the woman in a park lot in central Okinawa, inflicting physical injuries that took two weeks to heal.
Christopher was sentenced 10 years in prison and Skyler was sentenced 9 years and they will be serving their time in a Japanese prison. What’s interesting is that even though some foreigners act contemptible and violent, it’s always hard for any countries to sentence foreigners and especially sentencing them to serve in their prison. It gets even complicated when trying to deal those cases done by foreigners from countries with more power.
There have long been tensions in Okinawa over anti-US military base because it caused number of crimes and sexual assaults in the past. In 1995, a 12 years old girl in the same town got raped by 3 US soldiers but because they were apprehended while on a military base, the US refused to give them over to Japanese authorities. Though this, the people of Okinawa were outraged even more when they all were getting light prison sentence back in US. As the same problem raised again few months ago by Christopher and Skyler, Japanese seemed to have made up their minds and repeatedly stated that the Japanese government needs to do something about US military base in Okinawa.
Eun Jee Lee
3/1/2013 4:57pm
No comments:
Post a Comment