Japanese city criminalizes hate speech vs minorities
Credit to Author: Xinhua| Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2019 16:13:36 +0000
TOKYO: The city of Kawasaki in the Greater Tokyo area on Thursday enacted a new ordinance imposing criminal penalties on those found guilty of hate speech targeting ethnic minorities in Japan, a nationwide scourge that has for decades made everyday life here intimidating and miserable for victims.
The bill, the first of its kind in Japan, which now bans discriminatory language and actions in public against people who do not come from Japan, was approved by Kawasaki City’s 60-seat assembly and will come into force on July 1.
Under the ordinance, violators will be issued warnings and repeat offenders issued city-mandated orders. In addition, the city can reveal the names and addresses of those found guilty of hate speech and criminal charges may be filed against them.
Repeated violators could face penalties of up to 500,000 yen ($4,600) under the new ordinance.
Kawasaki Mayor Norihiko Fukuda said the new ordinance would be an effective measure to deal with issues of discrimination against ethnic minorities and that it was suitable to the city’s demographic.
“Now we have an ordinance with great effectiveness that suits the local situation,” Fukuda said, with reference to the city’s population of 1.5 million people comprising a large number of Korean[s]… and those of Korean descent.
The ordinance specifies discriminatory actions that the city will no longer tolerate, with these including calls for minorities to be kicked out of Japan, the encouragement of physical attacks against residents hailing from countries or regions outside Japan, and verbal insults likening them to things other than humans, such as insects.
The move by Kawasaki City, the eighth most populated city in Japan, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, comes following the central government in 2016 enacting a law aimed at curbing hate speech that fell a long way short of the city’s hopes and did little to stamp out such discrimination, as no punitive measures were included in the law to ban or punish such discriminatory language.
Owing to rising instances of xenophobic remarks made against residents in Japan of foreign lineage and their descendants, particularly, but not limited to Korean residents in Japan known as “Zainichi Koreans,” the anti-hate speech law was brought into effect in 2016.
But since then, and most recently in May this year, lawmakers from both Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic and opposition parties said more constant efforts are needed to made to eradicate hate speech here, with some members calling for a new law to be enacted to comprehensively ban the discriminatory practice while highlighting the current law’s limitations.
Xinhua