AFP, TOKYO: Japanese protesters on Sunday demonstrated against the heavy US military presence on the island of Okinawa, as tensions run high after a base employee was arrested following the rape and murder of a local woman. Some 100 people marched through the streets of downtown Tokyo, with many of them holding banners reading “no more base”. The protest, calling for plans to create a fresh US base on the southern island to be scrapped, came a week before tens of thousands on Okinawa plan to hold their own rally against the foreign military presence. A series of crimes including rapes, assaults and hit-and-run accidents by US military personnel, dependents and civilians have long sparked protests. Last week Kenneth Franklin Shinzato, 32, a former US Marine employed at the US Air Force’s sprawling Kadena Air Base, was arrested for the alleged rape and murder of a 20-year-old woman.