The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 25

World 25 THE AGE I SATURDAY 25 OCTOBER 1997 A murder in Chirns has unleashed negative media coverage in Japan that is seriously damaging Australia Camadla in a totodl on greeehoMse Japan turns on Australia and Cairns victim OTTAWA, Friday warm up, potentially shortening winters but also causing Hoods, fires, droughts and other costly problems. Canada's ministers stung by having blown greenhouse gas targets agreed to at the 1992 Karth Summit in Kio de Janeiro say they want to think the issues through carefully before committing the country in December in Kyoto, Japan, to new, legally binding targets. In 1992, Canada agreed to cut its emissions to 1990 levels by 2000, but by 199fi levels were, already 10.5 per cent above 1990. "When we made our commitment in Kio in 1992, we really weren't aware enough of what we had to do in order to achieve our targets," the Knvironment Minister, Ms Christine Stewart, said yesterday. "We weren't realistic at the time." She hinted in a television interview that she might be able to go along with Mr Clinton's new time-frame of reaching 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012.

Canada's main energy-producing province, Alberta, has made it clear that it npposses binding targets. Environmentalists say it is up to the Government to convince the people that climate change will cost Canada. Reuters Canada's (iui'emment yesterday drew tire from environmen-lalists iind opposition for being the only major industrial nation not to say what it intends to do about the greenhouse effect. 1 he Liberal Government, which likes to wave its green colors in official pronouncements, is caught in a bind between ecologists demanding action and an energy industry and business groups reluctant to slow the economy. And as snow has already blanketed much of the country just one month into autumn, it will be difficult to persuade Canadians that a little more warmth and winters shorter than six or seven months would be a bad thing.

But with President Bill Clinton having now announced the US position on how to limit greenhouse gases, adding to earlier announcements by lapan and the European Union, Canada's hedging has become more noticeable. Many, though not all, scientists believe greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide given off when coal, oil and gas are burned will make the earth Tourism Minister Andrew Thomson faces the media in Cairns, and the headline from a magazine story on the murder. and the teenage boy charged with her murder, magazines and television chat shows continue to devote their attention to the case. As one young Japanese professional who has lived in Australia and visited Cairns said: "I don't want anybody to misunderstand Cairns or Australia," he wrote on the web page. "I fear lots o'f people might misunderstand and give up going to such a wonderful place (Cairns) is full of warm-hearted people." Russell Skelton, Japan correspondent, TOKYO, Friday When Hideo a a returned to Tokyo's Narita airport from Cairns in North Queensland, where he had gone to identify his sister's battered body and attend to her funeral, he was swarmed by Japanese media representatives.

"On my first day back in Japan, I felt like going back to Cairns right away," he said. "Narita airport was full of press, cameras and reporters pushing us. We had to pay hundreds of dollars just to give a press conference." For almost three weeks since, Mr Okuyama and his family have struggled to counter a wave of distorted reporting in Japan about their murdered relative, and about Australia and Australians. Michiko Okuyama, 22, who died in Cairns earlier this month, has been portrayed in several mass-circulation magazines and on top-rating television chat shows as a silly flirt who courted danger. Australia has been presented as an increasingly violent and racist country with a growing dislike of Asians and a particular resentment of young Japanese travelling on work permits.

Some magazines have linked her death to views of the independent Queensland MP Mrs Pauline Hanson and high unemployment. he negative media coverage of Ms Okuyama's murder has caused serious damage to Australia's image as a safe tourist destination. A spokesman for Kinki Nippon Tourist Company, Japan's US Indians regain 1855 right to hunt grey whales While snidely criticising the way she was dressed at the time of her disappearance, the article went on to note that crime was on the increase in Cairns. Murdered Japanese tourist Michiko Okuyama, 22. second-largest travel agency, said most Japanese believed Australia was generally a safe country and that Ms Okuyama's death was an isolated incident.

"However, recent travel figures to Australia are down for this time of the year and I believe it is because of the murder," lie said. Tony Virilli, who heads the Australian Tourist Commission's Tokyo office, played down the impact of the incident, saying that tourism figures had been up 6.5 per in July immediately before the murder and traditionally fell in September. He said the commission had not been told of any cancellations due to the murder. Although it is only weeks since Ms Okuyama disappeared on her way to the Cairns post office, it is difficult to believe that her murder will not adversely affect the Japan-Australia tourist trade given the extensive media coverage. Apart from detailed reports in the national newspapers about circumstances of her death appearance she wore a tank-top the article went on to note that crime was increasing in Cairns.

he more conservative Daily Yomiuri Shimbiin newspaper highlighted Australia's growing crime rate, noting that it was considerably higher than Japan's. A report in the paper noted that Cairns' homicide rate for 1995 was 4.2 cases per 100,000 residents. "That was nearly four times the Tokyo rate of 1.1 per cent," the paper said. Australia is trying to counter the adverse publicity with the launch next month of a $1 million-plus advertising campaign promoting safety. As for Mr Okuyama and his family, they have stopped answering the phone and recently took a picture of Ms Okuyama off the home page because "somebody was doing malicious mischief to To avoid further media harassment, he cancelled a public notice of his sister's funeral Ms Okuyama, the other was a Japanese tour guide claiming they had been approached by young Australian males in a menacing way.

The first said she felt threatened when a white male knocked on her door in the middle of the day asking for a light, the other said she saw a man lurking in a trench coat at the airport. "It was very scary," she said, even though the man had not approached her. Another 20-year-old Cairns woman was quoted as saying: "If you take the same care living in Cairns that you do in Japan, you should be all right, but the impression that Cairns is safe is incorrect." The Shiikan Gendui Magazine, another publication with millions of Japanese female readers, carried a similar coverage of the murder, including a ghoulish description of Ms Okuyama's "black twisted body that bore no resemblance to her While snidely criticising the way she was dressed at the time of her dis MONACO, Friday commission's annual meeting. Twenty of those whales will go to the Makah tribe, who claim their right to hunt whales dates back to 1855. The commission banned commercial whaling in 1982 but allows subsistence whaling by Aborigines.

Opponents criticised the US for twinning its request with that of the impoverished Chu-kotka Inuit of Siberia, and insisted that the quota was for natives with recognised subsistence needs. Reuters "But the media, they never give up We felt much calmer and quieter in Cairns and I felt more keenly the warmth and respect of the people of Cairns." A recent article in the Shukan losel magazine, a weekly with a big female readership, warned travellers not to think Cairns was a safe place for women. The article published interviews with women in Cairns one lived across the road from "Everybody in lapan is interested in this case because we always thought Australia was a very safe place It is a shock for us. We always thought Australia was a friendly and warm country, but now we have to rethink all that." Mr Okuyama and his family were so shocked by the bad publicity about Australia and his sister that he set up an Internet home page to set the record straight. The International Whaling Commission has cleared the way for an American Indian tribe to hunt grey whales in the Pacific despite strong objections from Australia, New Zealand and environmentalists.

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