Shii urges Abe to oust health minister

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Shii urges Abe to oust health minister

Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo on January 31 demanded that Prime Minister Abe Shinzo dismiss Health, Labor, and Welfare Minister Yanagisawa Hakuo from his post for his remark characterizing women as "birth-giving machines."

Chair Shii along with Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi and Diet Policy Commission Chair Kokuta Keiji met Chief Cabinet Secretary Shiozaki Yasuhisa in the Diet and handed him a written statement addressed to the prime minister calling for the removal of Yanagisawa.

Shii strongly criticized Yanagisawa's remark as inexcusable and the worst kind of statement to deny women's character and dignity. He added that his remark is also unacceptable in that it was made by the minister who is supposed to defend human rights in health, labor, and welfare affairs.

Shii stressed that if the prime minister cannot properly settle this problem, his Cabinet's moral sense of human rights is proved to be the same as Yanagisawa's.

Pointing out that the defense of the living conditions of the public will be a major issue in the upcoming budget committee meetings, Shii demanded that Yanagisawa be removed from office before the committee starts discussions in order to avoid a strained situation in the committee.
- Akahata, February 1, 2007