To use this site, please disable the ad blocking feature and reload the page.
This website uses cookies to collect information about your visit for purposes such as showing you personalized ads and content, and analyzing our website traffic. By clicking “Accept all,” you will allow the use of these cookies.
Users accessing this site from EEA countries and UK are unable to view this site without your consent. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.
Yuji Yoshikata / The Yomiuri Shimbun Samiullah Malang Azizi, second from right, offers flowers with his son Nakamura, right, during a memorial ceremony for Japanese doctor Tetsu Nakamura held in a Kabul gym attended by members of the Nakamura Sports Complex on Wednesday.
By Yuji Yoshikata / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent
15:32 JST, November 29, 2024
KABUL — A memorial ceremony was held for Japanese doctor and humanitarian Tetsu Nakamura in Kabul on Wednesday, ahead of the fifth anniversary of his murder in Afghanistan.
A private sports facility named after him, which was the venue of last year’s ceremony, was demolished due to a landownership issue. This year’s ceremony was held at a rented space, which will only be available for a short while. A ceremony organizer is hoping to be able to hold the event again next year.
Tetsu Nakamura
Nakamura was the representative in Afghanistan for Peshawar-kai, a Japanese humanitarian organization based in Fukuoka, and he was engaged in the construction of wells and irrigation facilities. On Dec. 4, 2019, he was killed by an armed group while traveling by car from his base of activities in Jalalabad, which lies to the east of Kabul. He was 73.
Samiullah Malang Azizi, 43, the organizer of the ceremony, was told out of the blue in early October to vacate the sports facility he had built just last year. It turned out that the owner of the land on which the Nakamura Sports Complex stood was not the person he had believed to be.
In Afghanistan, disputes over landownership are said to arise whenever the government changes. It all started with a land survey conducted under the rule of the Islamist group Taliban that seized power in 2021. The survey confirmed that the person who asked Malang Azizi to leave was the landowner based on the title deeds among other documents.
Yuji Yoshikata / The Yomiuri Shimbun Samiullah Malang Azizi stands on Sunday where a boxing ring was set up in the former site of the Nakamura Sports Complex, which was the location of a ceremony last year to remember the late doctor Tetsu Nakamura.
The landowner insisted on converting the facility into a restaurant, so Malang Azizi had no choice but to leave. Renovation work began immediately and the complex, which housed a boxing ring, was demolished.
Moved so much by the philosophy of Nakamura, who devoted his life to humanitarian aid, Malang Azizi named his third son Nakamura. Now 4, he was born just two days after the doctor’s murder.
Malang Azizi opened the Nakamura Sports Complex in the hopes of passing on Nakamura’s spirit to the younger generation through education and sport. Members of the complex were able to practice six sports, such as boxing and Muay Thai.
The remaining members currently work out in a gym run by Malang Azizi’s friend on the condition that they only use it three days a week.
Gym owner Abdul Karim Hajizada, 38, said he accepted them because they were members of a facility named after Nakamura whom he respects. His gym, however, is only about three-quarters the size of the former complex, and the only sport they can practice is wrestling. Membership has dropped from about 300 to less than 60.
Many people attended last year’s memorial ceremony, but limited space this year meant only some members could attend. The rental agreement for the space is for two months.
Malang Azizi said he would have to give up on running the sports facility if he could not find a place with low rent, but he at least wanted to keep holding a memorial ceremony for Nakamura.
