TOKYO, March 31 (UPI) -- Japan's top official Friday criticized China's cruel intimidation and threats over suicide notes of a Japanese Consulate who committed suicide in May 2004.
"According to the result of our investigation, the immediate cause for a Japanese consulate's suicide was cruel intimidation and threats by Chinese intelligence officers. I acknowledge there had been cruel and unusual threats," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe told a news conference Friday morning.
"The worker did not bow to these threats, but laid down his life for his country," He added, the Mainichi Shimbun reported Friday.
Foreign Ministry sources said the worker was in charge of communications who handled transmission of coded telegrams, and it was evident from a suicide note he handed to the Shanghai consul general that he was pressured by Chinese public security officials to hand over classified information, such as information relating to coding systems and the backgrounds of Japanese Consulate General officials in Shanghai.
"A fragment (of espionage activities aimed at workers overseas) has been uncovered. We have strongly protested this and are instructing workers to immediately notify their superiors if this sort of thing continues," Foreign Minister Taro Aso Friday told reporters at a separate news conference, the newspaper reported.
