Japan: Police Clear Demonstrators At American Military Base

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Japanese police cleared cars left by protesters to block the roads to an American military base on the island of Okinawa on Sunday, in protest at the basing of 12 Bell-Boeing MV-22 tiltrotor aircraft there on Monday, Kyodo news reported.

Local people blocked all three roads into the U.S. Air Force base at Futenma base by parking their cars on the roads and ignored police appeals to take them away, forcing the police to use heavy equipment to move them. There were no reports of arrests.

Japan
Japan

Earlier this month, the governments of Japan and the U.S. agreed to a plan for the stationing of MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft at the base in Japan after a study by the Japanese concluded the aircraft did not pose special risks to local people.

MV-22 flights will be limited to a minimum ceiling of 500 feet (150 meters) and they will not be allowed over populated areas.

Up to 24 MV-22s will be based at Futenma by 2014.

The MV-22 Osprey family of aircraft has had a troubled history, with several fatal crashes during testing and development.

An MV-22 crashed during the African Lion military exercise in Morocco in April of this year, prompting the Japanese to ask the U.S. for guarantees regarding the safety of the deployment in Okinawa.

VOR

VOR, or the Voice of Russia, was the Russian government's international radio broadcasting service from 1993 until 2014, when it was reorganised as Radio Sputnik.

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