White House Celebrates Maoist Yuri Kochiyama who Cheered Bin Laden, Communist Massacre in Peru
The
White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (WHIAANHPI) posted a celebration of Women's History Month Friday honoring activist Yuri Kochiyama, who was a public admirer of terrorist Usama bin Laden.
Kochiyama was a Japanese-American activist for communism and racial equality during the 20th century. Kochiyama's career as an activist was a controversial and volatile one. A victim of violent U.S. discrimination and an early voice for racial harmony, she also championed Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward and was an advocate for terrorists.
"I consider Usama bin Laden as one of the people that I admire. To me, he is in the category of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro," Kochiyama said after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "I thank Islam for bin Laden. America's greed, aggressiveness and self-righteous arrogance must be stopped. War and weaponry must be abolished."
In this file photo taken Sept. 26, 2004, Yuri Kochiyama, of Oakland, Calif., looks at a memorial erected for the inhabitants of a Japanese-American World War II interment camp in Rohwer, Ark. The civil rights activist, whose photograph famously appeared in Life magazine showing her cradling the head of Malcom X moments after he was shot, died of natural causes in her Berkeley, Calif., home June 1, 2014. She was 93. (AP Photo/Mike Wintroath, File)
Kochiyama was also a supporter of the Shining Path movement, a Maoist terrorist cell led by former philosophy professor Abimael Guzmán. Shining Path killed at least 24,000 people over the course of 12 years in its campaign to overthrow the Peruvian government in a communist revolution.
White House celebrates Maoist Yuri Kochiyama who cheered bin Laden, communist massacre in Peru