July 26th 2021 marks the five year anniversary of what is now often referred to as the ‘Sagamihara Stabbings’, when in the early hours of July 26th 2016, Satoshi Uematsu, a former employee of the ‘Tsukui Yamayuri En’ or ‘Tsukui Lily Garden’ care home for people with disabilites, killed 19 residents with disabilites and injured at least 26 others.
The prefectural government of Kanagawa, eastern Japan, held a ceremony on Sunday to open a new facility for disabled people that replaces Tsukui Yamayuri-en, where 45 people were killed or injured in a rampage nearly five years ago.
The event, which is separate from the coming-of-age ceremony organized by the city, has been held every year for the past six years by a group of parents of children with disabilities.
Sagamihara City is withdrawing its plan to receive the Tokyo Paralympic torch at Tsukui Yamayurien, a facility for the intellectually disabled where 45 residents were killed and injured in July 2016, according to interviews with city officials.
Kentaro Motomura, the Mayor of Sagamihara City, spoke at a regular press conference on the 20th about the intellectually disabled facility “Tsukui Yamayurien” where 19 residents were killed in July 2016. Mayor Motomura said: “I want to make a comprehensive judgment, including changing the location,” he said. The bereaved families were asking the city to cancel the event.
しかし、一部の障害者権利団体は、非常に多くの障害者が殺害または負傷した場所の近くでパラリンピックイベントを開催するという考えに同意していません。
A disability rights group is protesting against a Paralympic Torch Ceremony that is scheduled to be held near a care home where people with disabilities were killed in 2016.
Governor Kuroiwa, who received the report, said, “Although we cannot directly link this to the incident in which 19 people were killed, the problem is connected to it, and the prefectural government’s responsibility for overlooking it has been severely pointed out. We will take the report seriously and work to realize support from the user’s perspective,” he said.
Nobuyuki Hirota, head of Sagamihara’s Olympic and Paralympic promotion section, said he remains committed to honoring the victims and survivors of the massacre of disabled people.
The design of the memorial monument to be installed at the intellectually disabled facility in Sagamihara City, where 19 people were killed was chosen.
The monument will have a space to put the names of the victims, and the prefecture will confirm its intention to put the names on the bereaved families in the future.
Barrier Free Japan