Small protests against Trump in Japan, Philippines ahead of inauguration

Anti-Trump rally in Tokyo, Japan. PHOTO: REUTERS

TOKYO (REUTERS) - Several hundred people, most of them expatriate Americans, held a protest on Friday (Jan 20) in the Japanese capital Tokyo, against US President-elect Donald Trump, hours before his inauguration in Washington.

Some people held up electric candles and others carried placards reading "Love Trumps Hate" and "Women's Rights Are Human Rights", as they marched along a downtown street.

"Trump presidency gets my blood boiling ... Everything we value could be gone. It's time to speak your mind and concerns and to do our best to salvage the values we cherish in America,"said Mr Bill Scholer, an art teacher.

"I grew up in the 1960s, and it feels like we are going backwards, and am very worried that we will lose all of the advances we have made over these years," said Ms Holly Thompson, a writer.

Women's rights activists plan protests in various Asian cities on Saturday.

In the Philippines earlier on Friday, about 200 demonstrators from a Philippine nationalist group rallied for about an hour against Mr Trump outside the US embassy in Manila.

Some held up signs demanding US troops leave the Philippines while others set fire to a paper US flag bearing a picture of Trump's face.

Mr Trump's presidency is being viewed with caution in some parts of Asia.

He alarmed China by breaking with decades of precedent last month by taking a congratulatory telephone call from Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen.

China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and objects to countries interacting with it as a violation of Beijing's"one-China" principle. Mr Trump has even raised questions about the US position on the principle.

He has also criticised China's trade practices and threatened to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese imports.

He has also said he would kill an ambitious Asia-Pacific trade pact, raising questions about the prospects for globalisation and free trade.

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