SDHF Newsletter No.217 Report to Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination 2

NGO Report to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
NGO Report in relation to the tenth to eleventh periodic reports of Japan
Series No.2: 1. The Circumstance of the Ryukyu/Okinawa

Submitted by Japan NGO Coalition against Racial Discrimination

August 6, 2018

The first report of the Japan NGO Coalition is “1. The Circumstance of the Ryukyu/Okinawa.”
In its recommendation issued in September 2014, the following were mentioned:
Committee recommends that the State party review its position and
consider recognizing the Ryukyu as indigenous peoples and take concrete steps to
protect their rights.
This recommendation is really preposterous and greatly infringes on the human rights of Okinawa people. The NGO report, written by “Okinawa Policy Research Forum of Japan,” demands the retraction of the recommendation for the following reasons:
a. The citizens of Okinawa Prefecture regard themselves as Japanese and do not recognize themselves as indigenous people. Evidence attached.
b. There has never been, in either the Diet or in local assemblies, a discussion on whether Okinawans are either Japanese or indigenous people. Demands for rights as indigenous people have never been taken up by local assembly.
c. It is an act of discrimination against Okinawans, who are Japanese, as well as an infringement on their human rights and against the reason d’etre of the Committee, for the UN Human Rights Council to recommend that the Okinawan people be recognized as an “indigenous people”.
d. The Language of Okinawa is a Japanese dialect and a part of the Japanese language.
e. Analysis of the human genome of people living in the present-day Ryukyu Islands shows that they have no genetic relatedness with people living in Taiwan or on the Asian Continent. They are, in fact, genetically close to people of Japan Proper.
f. Others

1. The Circumstance of the Ryukyu/Okinawa:
URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/essay-article/1211/

PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/2018-08-CERD96_Japan_JNCRD-2.pdf
　
Questions are welcome.

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Acting Chairman
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact