91-year-old ex-PM Murayama on street against Japan's security bills

TOKYO, July 23 -- Former Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, 91, on Thursday addressed several hundreds of protesters on the street near the country's Diet building opposing a series of controversial security bills pushed forward by the government here.

Murayama said the Japanese war-renouncing Constitution protect Japan from any armed conflicts in the past 70 years since the end of the World War II, adding the security bills will damage the country's pacifism.

The bills, which were rammed through the Diet's all-powerful lower house last week, if enacted, will allow Japan's Self-Defense Forces to engage in armed conflicts overseas and help defend others even if Japan is not under attack, but Japan's Constitution bans the SDF to do so.

Murayama also said the government's move to push the bills through the lower house was intolerable and its arrogance despising public wills was unforgivable. He said he will make all efforts to stop the passage of the bills in the future at any cost.

Latest polls here showed that majority of Japanese people opposed the security bills and supporting rate for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's dived about 10 percentage points immediately after the bills' passage in the lower house.