Arab News Japan

TOKYO: MORI Takeo, Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, summoned Mikhail Y. Galuzin, Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Japan, on Wednesday following the detention of a Japanese consular official and decision to declare the official persona non grata.

Russia is seeking the expulsion of the consular officer at the Consulate-General of Japan in Vladivostok on account of “conducting illegal information collection activities.”

Mori said the series of acts by Russia constituted “taking a consular officer of the Consulate-General of Japan in Vladivostok away in a physically coercive manner and conducting an intimidating interrogation.” Mori said this was a clear and serious violation of relevant provisions, including “personal inviolability of consular officers” stipulated in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. This, he emphasized, was absolutely unacceptable to Japan.

It was also, he added, “a clear and serious violation of the Japan-Soviet Consular Convention, which provides that consular officers shall enjoy immunity from the jurisdiction of the receiving State.”

Mori said it was “an unbelievable act that Russia notified the expulsion of the consular officer as a persona non grata despite such unjustifiable treatment by Russia.”