A hearing on human rights is disrupted by right-wingers

In 1995, Japan signed the United Nations Convention against all forms of Racial Discrimination. By doing so, it promised “without delay” to take all measures, including legislation, to eliminate racial discrimination within its borders. However, more than a decade later, Japan still has not passed any laws against discrimination by race. And as the spread of “Japanese Only” signs and rules nationwide attests, laws are sorely needed.

So is the urge to come clean. Under this treaty, the Japanese government must submit a report every two years on what it is doing to eliminate racial discrimination. It is mighty late, filing its first report, due in 1998, in 2001. And it has filed no reports since then.

In preparation for the next report, and to avoid charges that the bureaucrats were not listening to the public, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has held open hearings, attended over the years by NGOs and “concerned citizens”. The latest meeting took place yesterday afternoon, August 31, and I attended. It was, in a word, a disaster…

As further evidence that the GOJ has little interest in enforcing its own guidelines (or at least those secured when it signed the UN Convention on Racial Discrimination), information has surfaced that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs allowed in a convicted agent provocateur into the August 31, 2007 meeting on Japan’s response to the UN treaty. Moreover (as a link to a transcript of the meeting will demonstrate), MOFA officials did not stop him and his ilk from shutting down the meeting. Appeals to other government ministries with appropriate powers look futile.