A man in his 70s has burned himself to death this Wednesday to protest the state funeral scheduled for September 27, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abedied in early July after being shot at a campaign rally.
Despite having suffered burns all over his body, he remains conscious and in stable condition. The Police have gone to the Chiyoda neighborhood, in Tokyo, around 6:50 a.m. (local time) after receiving a call from a pedestrian in which he warned that he had seen a “man on fire”.
Upon arrival at the scene, the Police found a handwritten note that read: ‘As an individual, I vehemently oppose the state funeral’, according to the Japanese newspaper ‘The Asahi Shimbun’.
A policeman has been injured in his right arm while trying to put out the flames that completely covered this person. “I poured fuel on myself and caught fire,” say some sources that the man said when the Police and a crew of Firefighters arrived.
Abe died on July 8. after being shot during a campaign rally in the city of Nara, in the south-west of the country. The state funeral scheduled for September 27 in Tokyo has been highly questioned by part of Japanese society, which considers it inappropriate to pay tribute to a president, whose administration was dotted with scandals.