RIGHTS-JAPAN: Testing the New Anti-stalking Law

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Nov 30 2000 (IPS) - She had decided to end their relationship, but he was insistent in continuing it. When she would not relent, he began stalking her.

Fortunately, the woman did not end up as yet another victim of a crime of passion. Earlier this week, the police arrested her ex- boyfriend, a 24-year-old construction worker, who now has the dubious distinction of being the first person to be charged of violating Japan’s new anti- stalking law.

The law came into effect just last Nov. 24. But some legal experts are already raising concerns that it may not offer enough protection to women and that it gives authorities too much leeway in determining which complaints involve “real” stalking.

Says lawyer Yukiko Tsunoda: “When the police know that the perpetrator is a former lover or husband, they back off.”

The law defines stalking as repeated acts of harassment toward a specific person, and motivated by an emotional attachment or grudge due to unrequited love. First-time offenders can be slapped with a six- month prison sentence and fined up to 500,000 yen or 5,000 dollars. The penalty is doubled if the offender violates the desist order.

Some agree that it does impose rather light sentences on offenders. They also say the definition it provides may be too narrow. Still, they say, the law is a welcome development.

“The law is important because it sends the message that violence against women is a crime punishable by law,” says Keiko Fukuhara, director of Mizura, a shelter for females fleeing violence.

At the very least, lawyers and women’s groups hope that its punitive measures would finally put the brakes on the number of stalking cases, which has been rising steeply in the last two years. At the same time, they say, the law may well encourage women who are being harassed to come forward at last.

Lawyer Katsudo Godo, who was involved in the drafting of the law, says that with the law in effect, women who are being stalked can seek “action through legal defence”.

He also notes that in the past, the Japanese police had “tended to see stalking as an internal issue between a woman and a man, unless there was a serious crime involved, which (meant) that it was (already) too late to do anything”.

Godo says this was partly why many women who were being stalked refrained from going to authorities, since they assumed it was pointless to do so.

In truth, police began recording stalking cases only in 1998. Since then, complaints about stalkers have surged 30 percent, with more than 8,000 reported last year, according to a National Police Agency report. Of these, about half followed their victims almost everywhere while half phoned their targets incessantly for several months.

Some cases have had tragic endings. Just last February, college student Yuko Onoi was murdered by a former boyfriend who had been harassing her.

Onoi and her family had sought help from the police, and even reported that the man had been physically abusive. But all the authorities did was to issue a verbal reprimand.

Two months later, a high school student was slain by a man she had been dating. Then in August, Japan was shook anew when a 34-year-old woman was slain by a former lover who had been stalking her for a year.

According to media reports, this was despite the police having been alerted early on about the problem, and even having set up a special phone line in the victim’s home.

But probably among the better known cases is that of Hiroshi Fujita’s family, which saw one of its members murdered by a stalker in 1997.

It was actually the eldest daughter who was the real target of the young man, who was her former classmate. But the man harassed the entire family for eight months by calling up and then keeping silent once the phone was picked up. He also threw stones at the Fujita house.

The police were called in, but they only warned the man. One morning, he managed to enter the family’s home — and then stabbed Fujita ‘s wife to death. The stalker-turned-murderer was sent to a mental home. He was acquitted of all charges later, much to the horror of the Fujita family.

Hiroshi Fujita suffered a nervous breakdown himself. But he recovered and wrote a book, ‘A Stalker Killed My Wife’, which was published May this year. Interestingly enough, that was also the month the anti- stalking law was passed.

Police say there have been cases of men being stalked by women. But women’s rights activists and legal experts say it is not surprising that 90 percent of the targets of stalkers are women.

Fukuhara, for instance, says that the second-class status of women in Japan can only encourage gender-based crime. She also says that Japanese women often blame themselves for the violence done to them because they do not realise that they enjoy the same rights as men.

According to Fukuhara, this is why the government must still do more to ensure better protection for women. She points out that women in Japan need more aside from the new law in order to be safe from abuse.

Indeed, counsellors at a private telephone counselling service report that more and more women seem to be turning into victims of sexual violence. The counsellors say that more often than not, the perpetrators are former boyfriends who resented being asked to end the relationship.

Last August, police also caught a man who had been ordering women whom he accosted on the streets at night to remove their underwear.