Parents warn Tokyo’s two-year delay in implementing new laws could trigger a “dash to the finish line” to abduct more children.
revealed last year that more than 80 Australian children had been abducted by their Japanese parent since 2004, Wong said the situation was “incredibly distressing”.“I think a parent’s heartbreak always cuts deep,” she said. “For anyone who meets them and talks with them and understands it – if you’re a parent yourself, you always think about how you would feel in that situation.
“All I can say, from my perspective, I gave this a great deal of priority in terms of my interactions.” In April, US Congressman Christopher Smith, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, hand-delivered a letter to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Washington that said 500 abducted American children “was an open wound” that threatened to derail the country’s economic and security ties.
“That is everything. I’m blessed in a way compared to a lot of the other parents that haven’t managed to get that,” he said. “But in the grand scheme of things, how can you build a relationship with your child from 10 minutes a week from a video call when she’s in another country?”
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