The Machida City Education Committee of Tokyo Metropolis made a "decision" not to distribute warning apparatuses for preventing crimes to pupils of Korean schools though it handed them out to the freshmen of all primary schools in the city. The committee formally informed Nishi Tokyo Korean Primary School No. 2 of this on March 28.

This has touched off a flurry of protest from Koreans in different parts of Japan and Japanese citizens.

The city education committee was deluged with protest phones that numbered more than 500 till the morning of April 8 since the "decision" was made public.

On April 5 the above-said school held an emergency press conference demanding the city education committee make an official apology and cancel the unreasonable discrimination step.

At the press conference principal of the school Ri Jong Ae condemned the step as an unpardonable human rights abuse and a foolish act of threatening the life and security of children.

The chairperson of the mothers' society lamented the discrimination the innocent children are exposed to.

Japanese citizens in their speeches said intolerable is the city education committee's act of maltreating some schools, adding they feel shame as Japanese.

Meanwhile, the delegates of the Liaison Council Opposing Exclusion of Korean Schools from Tuition-waiver Program for Senior High Schools and the Society of Machida Citizens for Supporting Korean Schools, civic organizations of Japan, and an honorary professor of Hitotsubashi University visited the city education committee and submitted letters of protest to it.

Civic critic Ryoko Ozawa in a radio speech on April 5, referring to this issue, said: It is a clear ill-treatment. Children have nothing to do with politics.