SDHF Newsletter No.220 Report to Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination 5
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. 5: 4. The Elimination of Hate Speech
Submitted by the Japan NGO Coalition against Racial Discrimination
August 14, 2018
The fourth report of the Japan NGO Coalition is “4. The Elimination of Hate Speech.”
Based on the recommendation from the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 2014, in May 2016, the “Act on Promotion of Efforts towards Elimination of Unjustifiable Discrimination Letters to Outside Japan”, the so-called Hate Speech Removal Act, was established in Japan.
The alleged purpose of this law was to abolish racial discrimination, but this law in fact discriminates against Japanese citizens.
This law narrowly defines speech involving “Persons Originating from Outside Japan”, such as Koreans in Japan, as “hate speech” and does not address hate speech against Japanese people. According to this law, hate speech against Japanese people is not an issue at all.
The phenomenon of hate speech has a number of sources. In response to Korean hate speech, some Japanese people have denounced Korean hate speech. Do not forget this basic point: we cannot think about measures against “hate speech” without considering the cause of “hate speech”.
This law should be changed to an Act “On the Promotion of Efforts to Eliminate Unfair Discriminatory Speech and Behavior Based on Racial Bias and Other Forms of Discrimination,” which would be fairly and equally applied to every person living in Japan.
This NGO report urges the immediate abolishment of the current unreasonably racist law.
4. The Elimination of Hate Speech Act:
URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/essay-article/1219/
PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/2018-08-CERD96_Japan_JNCRD-5.pdf
Questions are welcome.
MOTEKI Hiromichi, Acting Chairman
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact