TOKYO: US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel will skip this year’s atomic bombing memorial service in Nagasaki because Israel was not invited, the embassy said Wednesday.
Emanuel will not attend the event on Friday because it was “politicized” by Nagasaki’s decision not to invite Israel, the embassy said.
He will instead honor the victims of the Nagasaki atomic bombing at a ceremony at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo, it said.
An atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, destroyed the city, killing 140,000 people. A second bomb dropped three days later on Nagasaki killed 70,000 more. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, ending World War II and the country’s nearly half-century of aggression in Asia.
Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki had indicated his reluctance in June to invite Israel, noting the escalating conflict in the Middle East. He announced last week that Israel was not invited because of concern over “possible unforeseen situations” such as protests, sabotage or attacks on attendants. Nagasaki hoped to honor the atomic bomb victims “in a peaceful and solemn atmosphere,” he said.
Suzuki said he made the decision based on “various developments in the international community in response to the ongoing situation in the Middle East” that suggested a possible risk that the ceremony would be disturbed.
In contrast, Hiroshima invited the Israeli ambassador to Japan to its memorial ceremony on Tuesday among 50,000 attendees who included Emanuel and other envoys, though Palestinian representatives were not invited.
Nagasaki officials said they were told that an official of the US Consulate in Fukuoka will represent the United States at Friday’s ceremony. Five other Group of Seven nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the UK — and the European Union are also expected to send lower-ranking envoys to Nagasaki.
Envoys from those nations signed a joint letter expressing their shared concern about Israel’s exclusion, saying treating the country on the same level as Russia and Belarus — the only other countries not invited — would be misleading.
The envoys urged Nagasaki to reverse the decision and invite Israel to preserve the universal message of the city’s ceremony. The exclusion of Israel would make their “high-level participation” difficult, they said.
British Ambassador to Japan Julia Longbottom, who attended the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Tuesday, told Japanese media that she planned to skip the Nagasaki ceremony because the city’s decision to exclude Israel could send a wrong message.
US ambassador to Japan to skip A-bomb memorial service in Nagasaki because Israel was not invited
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US ambassador to Japan to skip A-bomb memorial service in Nagasaki because Israel was not invited
- Ambassador Rahm Emanuel will not attend Friday’s event because it was “politicized” by Nagasaki’s decision to exclude Israel
Afghan returnees in Bamiyan struggle despite new homes
- More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan: Sitting in his modest home beneath snow-dusted hills in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province, Nimatullah Rahesh expressed relief to have found somewhere to “live peacefully” after months of uncertainty.
Rahesh is one of millions of Afghans pushed out of Iran and Pakistan, but despite being given a brand new home in his native country, he and many of his recently returned compatriots are lacking even basic services.
“We no longer have the end-of-month stress about the rent,” he said after getting his house, which was financed by the UN refugee agency on land provided by the Taliban authorities.
Originally from a poor and mountainous district of Bamiyan, Rahesh worked for five years in construction in Iran, where his wife Marzia was a seamstress.
“The Iranians forced us to leave” in 2024 by “refusing to admit our son to school and asking us to pay an impossible sum to extend our documents,” he said.
More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), as neighboring Iran and Pakistan stepped up deportations.
The Rahesh family is among 30 to be given a 50-square-meter (540-square-foot) home in Bamiyan, with each household in the nascent community participating in the construction and being paid by UNHCR for their work.
The families, most of whom had lived in Iran, own the building and the land.
“That was crucial for us, because property rights give these people security,” said the UNHCR’s Amaia Lezertua.
Waiting for water
Despite the homes lacking running water and being far from shops, schools or hospitals, new resident Arefa Ibrahimi said she was happy “because this house is mine, even if all the basic facilities aren’t there.”
Ibrahimi, whose four children huddled around the stove in her spartan living room, is one of 10 single mothers living in the new community.
The 45-year-old said she feared ending up on the street after her husband left her.
She showed AFP journalists her two just-finished rooms and an empty hallway with a counter intended to serve as a kitchen.
“But there’s no bathroom,” she said. These new houses have only basic outdoor toilets, too small to add even a simple shower.
Ajay Singh, the UNHCR project manager, said the home design came from the local authorities, and families could build a bathroom themselves.
There is currently no piped water nor wells in the area, which is dubbed “the dry slope” (Jar-e-Khushk).
Ten liters of drinking water bought when a tanker truck passes every three days costs more than in the capital Kabul, residents said.
Fazil Omar Rahmani, the provincial head of the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation Affairs, said there were plans to expand the water supply network.
“But for now these families must secure their own supply,” he said.
Two hours on foot
The plots allocated by the government for the new neighborhood lie far from Bamiyan city, which is home to more than 70,000 people.
The city grabbed international attention in 2001, when the Sunni Pashtun Taliban authorities destroyed two large Buddha statues cherished by the predominantly Shia Hazara community in the region.
Since the Taliban government came back to power in 2021, around 7,000 Afghans have returned to Bamiyan according to Rahmani.
The new project provides housing for 174 of them. At its inauguration, resident Rahesh stood before his new neighbors and addressed their supporters.
“Thank you for the homes, we are grateful, but please don’t forget us for water, a school, clinics, the mobile network,” which is currently nonexistent, he said.
Rahmani, the ministry official, insisted there were plans to build schools and clinics.
“There is a direct order from our supreme leader,” Hibatullah Akhundzada, he said, without specifying when these projects will start.
In the meantime, to get to work at the market, Rahesh must walk for two hours along a rutted dirt road between barren mountains before he can catch a ride.
Only 11 percent of adults found full-time work after returning to Afghanistan, according to an IOM survey.
Ibrahimi, meanwhile, is contending with a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) walk to the nearest school when the winter break ends.
“I will have to wake my children very early, in the cold. I am worried,” she said.
