SDHF Newsletter No.218 Report to Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination 3

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. 3: 2. The Circumstance of the Ainu People

Submitted by Japan NGO Coalition against Racial Discrimination

August 8, 2018

The second report of the Japan NGO Coalition is “2. The Circumstance of the Ainu People.”
The CERD recommendation issued in September 2014 included numerous misunderstandings and errors in fact, such that the recommendations were based on erroneous assumptions.
Firstly, the Ainu people in Japan are different from indigenous, aboriginal races found in other countries. This is clear from the following points: there is no historical basis to the contention that that during the Meiji era, the Japanese Government robbed the Ainu people of their land and rights. On the contrary, at the request of Ainu people, the Diet enacted a law called the Act on the Protection of Indigenous People in Hokkaido, and vindicated their rights.
Some NGOs submitted a report asking that the Ainu people be given “rights”. However, their statements, listed below, are not based on facts as precisely explained in the report of the Japan NGO Coalition “2. The Circumstance of the Ainu People.”
a. “Since the Meiji Restoration, the government of Japan has encroached on the land of the Ainu and conquered and ruled them.”
b. “The government forcibly took the land of the Ainu, integrated in the nation state and colonized it.”
c. “The language, unique religion and all cultural manners and customs of the Ainu people were prohibited as evil custom. The government of Japan also banned their traditional vocations and forced them into agriculture.”
d. The statement, “It is the state of Japan and the Hokkaido local government who have been violating the rights of the Ainu,” is also false.

1. The Circumstance of the Ainu People:
URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/essay-article/1213/

PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/2018-08-CERD96_Japan_JNCRD-3.pdf

Questions are welcome.

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