Statement on the "Draft Bill to Promote Efforts to Eliminate Unfair Discriminatory Behavior against People Originating from Abroad"

Regarding hate speech, the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito Party submitted a bill to the House of Councillors on April 8, 2016, entitled "The Bill on Promoting Efforts to Eliminate Unfair Discriminatory Speech and Behavior Against People Born Outside Japan." The bill passed the House of Councillors plenary session on May 13 of the same year.

Undocumented immigrants, who have been supported by APFS for a long time, have also been the target of hate speech. In 2009, xenophobes stormed into the school where a Filipino female student living in Saitama Prefecture attended and made hate speech. Furthermore, even in 2016, hate speech against undocumented immigrants has been rampant on the Internet. Many undocumented immigrants are heartbroken by the hate speech that is being made. In light of the above, there are problems with the current proposed law that cannot be overlooked.

Article 2 of the proposed law limits its application to those "who are legally residing in Japan" among those originally from outside of Japan. APFS expresses strong concern about this point. The current proposed law does not regulate hate speech against irregular residents (defined as "illegal residents" by the Immigration Bureau of the Ministry of Justice), which could lead to a situation in which hate speech against irregular residents is openly carried out. Among irregular residents are those who have established a life base in Japan and are seeking special permission to stay, as well as refugee applicants who have fled persecution in their home countries and are applying for refugee status.

It is a huge contradiction for a bill that aims to "eliminate discriminatory speech and behavior" to discriminate in who it applies to. We strongly demand that the bill's limitation to "those who legally reside in the country" be deleted.

Even if the phrase "lawfully residing in Japan" is not deleted, the accompanying resolution states that "it is an error to think that any discriminatory behavior other than 'unfair discriminatory speech and behavior against persons originating from outside Japan' as stipulated in Article 2 is permitted, and appropriate measures will be taken in light of the purpose of this bill and the spirit of the Constitution and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination" (paragraph 1), and therefore discriminatory speech and behavior against irregular residents must never be tolerated.

Article 4(b) of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which the Japanese government has ratified, stipulates that "Organizations and organized and all other propaganda activities which promote and incite racial discrimination shall be deemed illegal and prohibited, and participation in such organizations or activities shall be recognized as a crime punishable by law." In light of this intent, although no mention of this was made in the current bill, I would like to emphasize that in the future it will be necessary to enact domestic laws with penalties for discriminatory speech and behavior.

May 16, 2016
ASIAN PEOPLE'S NPO
FRIENDSHIP SOCIETY (APFS)

The PDF of the statement isHere