Survivors of Fukushima catastrophe vow to fight on, despite prosecutors' repeated refusal to indict TEPCO execs
January 23, 2015 As reported by the Asahi Shimbun, "a group of residents, disaster victims and lawyers" has vowed to persevere in its years-long quest to seek prosecutions of top TEPCO executives, stemming from their suffering in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe that began on 3/11/11.
But, as the article reports:
"The Jan. 22 decision by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office rejected the stance of an independent judicial panel of citizens that former TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and two former vice presidents, Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro, should be indicted on charges of professional negligence resulting in death and injury."
The prospective plaintiffs will file a report with the independent judicial panel of citizens, appealing the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office decision. The Prosecutors Office previously declined to bring the TEPCO executives to justice in 2013.
As reported in the article, among the Prosecutors Office's lame excuses for not trying the TEPCO executives is:
'Prosecutors also said the probability of the Fukushima plant being hit by a 15.7-meter-high tsunami was “once in a million years to 10 million years.”
“It cannot be said that it was a duty for TEPCO to take measures (against tsunami of that height),” the prosecutors office said.'
But even larger scale tsunamis than the one that hit on 3/11/11 have struck northeast Japan, as recently as 869 A.D., as well as earlier just a few millenia ago, scientists have proven. The Prosecutors Office's “once in a million years to 10 million years” estimate flies in the face of such facts.
The Japanese Parliament's 2012 independent investigation report on the nuclear catastrophe contained a section describing how nuclear industry lobbyists with little to no expertise in tsunami science pressured decision makers to lower protections across Japan several years before the fateful day of 3/11/11, in order to save the nuclear power industry money by not having to build taller sea walls.
The question that was not asked was, how many Japanese perished by drowning due to the lowered sea walls across northeast Japan?