Police Raid Video Blogger’s Home in Japan · Global Voices
Keiko Tanaka

This post is part of our special coverage Japan Earthquake 2011.
Police from the Fukui Prefecture raided Fukuoka-based video blogger Yuzuru Kaneko's home on October 1, 2012. He has been covering Japan's anti-nuclear protests on his youtube channel.
Since the nuclear disaster in Fukushima following the 2011 Earthquake in Japan, the long believed myth of ‘safe’ nuclear power has lost its support, resulting in anti-nuclear protests all over the country.
While Japan's mass media rarely pay attention to anti-nuclear protests, videos of demonstrations filmed by citizens and grassroots media have been giving voice to the people; it also gives a clue to the police in identifying and charging demonstrators.
Below is a recent video filmed by Yuzuru Kaneko on Friday, November 9. It captures the ‘no-nuke’ demonstration in front of Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc (KEPCO), where protesters asked employees of KEPCO to cease nuclear power generation activities at the power plant.
This demonstration was a part of no-nuke protests that are happening in various places every Friday in Japan.
KEPCO, which is responsible for providing power in Kansai region runs the only active nuclear power plant in Japan called Ōi nuclear plant. The restart of Ōi nuclear plant is controversial because of its location; it may have an active fault line underneath it.
Image from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Yuzuru has been documenting the activities of an anti-nuclear citizen group that opposes the restart of the Ōi nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture. He filmed a demonstration where citizens and activists blocked the gate of the power plant on June 30 to prevent the plant from restarting operations.
One activist at the June 30 protest was later arrested [ja] on September 20 on suspicion of property destruction, injury, threat and assault at the gate, and for that reason the police searched the home of Yuzuru for videos that could contain evidence supporting the charges. Yuzuru claims he has nothing to do with the suspect, because he was only there to film the protest, but his computer, hard disk, and SD memory cards were confiscated by the police on October 1.
On November 5, a campaign[ja] was launched by his supporters demanding the police to return his belongings. On November 8, the police notified Yuzuru on the phone that they would return all of his equipment and data.
This post is part of our special coverage Japan Earthquake 2011.