japan_news_update

9 Japanese students to be tried in murder of classmate in N.Z.
http://news.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=2&id=269258

Monday, August 11, 2003 at 14:00 JST

SYDNEY — Nine Japanese students have been committed to stand trial for
murder in the New Zealand High Court over the beating death of a
classmate at an Auckland school, the Waitakere District Court said
Monday.

Nozomu Shinozaki, a 22-year-old from Yokohama, was assaulted for hours
before being found dead at Columbus Academy in suburban West Harbor on
Feb 26.

The students, aged between 17 and 26, pleaded not guilty to three
charges each of kidnapping, assault and murder at the end of a
two-week deposition hearing Friday in a lower district court, a court
registrar told Kyodo News.

A request by the students' lawyer John Haigh for their bail conditions
to be relaxed was denied by justices Don Chapman and Joan Mihaere, she
said. They have been confined to an academy house under 24-hour curfew
since Shinozaki's death.

The director of the now-closed performance arts school for troubled
Japanese youth, Soon Keuk Kim, also known as Katsuo Kanamori, has been
charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice after
allegedly telling the students not to cooperate with police.

The trial at the High Court in Auckland is unlikely to begin before
March, the New Zealand Press Association reported.

Exhibits, including a broom, a mop, a large teapot, a pool cue and
clothing, were bought into the court during the hearing.

The court was told that Shinozaki, who arrived in New Zealand in 1998,
suffered from autism and after little supervision at the academy
engaged in petty theft and minor arson.

The New Zealand government launched a multi-agency inquiry following
Shinozaki's death after discovering the unregistered status of the
academy, which was described to the court as overcrowded and squalid.

The accused students are Kazuhiro Sato, 19; Ryu Fukushima, 22; Ryuji
Hiraki, 26; Hidetaka Nishide, 26; Masato Fujita, 19; Motomu Kobori,
19; Daisuke Fukuda, 20; Kato Tomohisa, 17; and Nobu Oshima, 18. (Kyodo
News)

philip crookes

More likely a fire in a wastebasket or a dustbin.

But the real issue here is that there's no proper control over these
'academies'. This sort of nonsense would be easily controlled by insisting
that student visas are only issued to people registered for study at a
licensed teaching establishment - and after the establishment has been
inspected and paid a proper registration fee - which needs to be high enough
to cover the cost of regular inspection and certification. Say $2000 per
student place, to be checked against visas issued, with registration
cancelled if students don't leave when their visas run out.

Until such a system is in place abuses like this will proliferate and
there's no way to prevent them. Philip