By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Apr 2 2004 (IPS)

Japan’s social harmony has not encouraged grassroots activism but the rise in global terrorism is fast slamming the door shut, say human rights groups here.

Japan’s social harmony has not encouraged grassroots activism but the rise in global terrorism is fast slamming the door shut, say human rights groups here.

A recent case, criticised by Amnesty International Japan, involves the arrests and continued detention of three activists on Feb. 27 for distributing pamphlets opposing the dispatch to Iraq of troops from Japan’s Self-Defence Forces (SDF), the closest thing the country has to an armed forces.

The activists – two men and a woman – were arrested on charges of "trespassing" under Article 130 of the Japanese Criminal Code.

But human rights experts say the police action against activists who had merely distributed anti-war pamphlets is a disturbing sign of the increasing repression of activism in Japan.

”There is nothing wrong in distributing pamphlets, even if the aim was an anti-SDF deployment protest. The arrests are a clear case of the violation of the freedom of speech and comes during a time when security issues are high in the country,” says Makoto Teranaka of the human rights lobby Amnesty International Japan.

The arrested members belong to the Tachikawa Tent Village, a group that has been protesting for more than three decades against a former large U.S. base in Tachikawa, a suburb west of Tokyo.

Tamaki Kino, spokesman for the group, says the arrests came a month after the members had left anti-Iraq war pamphlets in mailboxes belonging to the families of SDF personnel.

”We were stunned when the police swooped down on our homes a month after we put the pamphlets into mailboxes. They searched our houses on the basis of complaints made against us. But there are so many vendors who routinely do what we did,” she says.

The group’s pamphlets called on SDF families to think more carefully about the deployment to Iraq.

”The pamphlets were geared to generate debate on the SDF among family members. After all, getting the SDF to rethink their deployment is important for a large number of people who oppose Japan’s decision to send troops to Iraq,” says Kino.

A major bone of contention for activists is the unusually long period in detention and daily interrogation meted out to the prisoners, simply for distributing pamphlets.

Says Teranaka, ”the harassment sends a chilling message to activists because they are up against a police system that has a poor human rights record (on issues) such as access to lawyers during interrogation.”

Public opinion polls show that almost half of the Japanese public opposed the move by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to send the SDF to Iraq in January, marking the first post-World War II SDF dispatch to a military zone.

Some 1,000 SDF troops are expected to be sent to Iraq, and several hundreds are already there, the last batch having left the country in late January. The dispatch of troops was traumatic for Japanese, who have turned their back on military activities after the defeat of their country at the end of World War II. The post-war Constitution was designed to prevent Japan from having a military that can have expansionist capabilities, after their occupation of neighbouring countries in the thirties and forties.

But one year after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, that hard-earned pacifism is on a risky path.

Activists point to the consequences of sending the SDF to Iraq – Japan, as a U.S. ally, now faces bomb threats from terrorist groups against the Iraq war and increasing security measures have begun to target peace activism preemptively.

Professor Manabu Ishizuka, who teaches constitutional law at Asia University, says the Tachikawa case is one of several incidents in which anti-government protests are not viewed as political rights but as subversive and criminal.

”The rising risk from terrorism is masking the real issue, which is that the government is responsible for terrorism threats because the decision to send SDF to Iraq was not supported by the majority of the public,” he says.

A similar incident was recorded on Mar. 3, when the public security section of the Metropolitan Police Department arrested a local government employee for distributing anti-war pamphlets of the Communist Party.

The media reported the case, which occurred in November, as an extremely rare one – the last arrest of a public servant for violating a law that prohibits them from engaging in politics even after work hours, on the basis of observing neutrality, was 21 years ago.

Yet another case that stirred Japan was the resignation in April last year of a former ambassador, Naoki Amaki, who publicly opposed Japan’s sending SDF troops to Iraq.

In his immensely popular book, ‘So Long, Ministry of Foreign Affairs’, released in October, Amaki accuses the government of virtually firing him because he expressed an opinion against government policy.

Ishizuka suggests that terrorism is leading to a dangerous situation for political and human rights activism as the government beefs up its call for not showing ”weakness against terrorism”.

He says he worries about the support this tension could bring to proposals by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to change Japan’s Constitution, which prohibits military involvement overseas. Of particular focus is Article 9, under which the country renounces war.

Constitutional reform is planned for 2007. The conservative LDP is calling for new laws to legalise the dispatch of the SDF to support the U.S. ‘war on terrorism’ in the future.

”In the face of a terrorist attack, people would be more inclined to support a militarily active Japan. This would be disastrous for activists who face the danger of being arrested for simply demanding their rights,” he says.

Excerpt:

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Apr 2 2004 (IPS)

Japan’s social harmony is not known for encouraging grassroots activism, but the rise in global terrorism is fast slamming the door shut on what little room they have, say human rights groups here.

A recent case, criticised by Amnesty International Japan, involves the arrests and continued detention of three activists on Feb. 27 for distributing pamphlets opposing the dispatch to Iraq of troops from Japan’s Self-Defence Forces (SDF), the closest thing the country has to an armed forces.

The activists – two men and a woman – were arrested on charges of “trespassing” under Article 130 of the Japanese Criminal Code.

But human rights experts say the police action against activists who had merely distributed anti-war pamphlets is a disturbing sign of the increasing repression of activism in Japan.

”There is nothing wrong in distributing pamphlets, even if the aim was an anti-SDF deployment protest. The arrests are a clear case of the violation of the freedom of speech and comes during a time when security issues are high in the country,” says Makoto Teranaka of the human rights lobby Amnesty International Japan.

The arrested members belong to the Tachikawa Tent Village, a group that has been protesting for more than three decades against a former large U.S. base in Tachikawa, a suburb west of Tokyo.

Tamaki Kino, spokesman for the group, says the arrests came a month after the members had left anti-Iraq war pamphlets in mailboxes belonging to the families of SDF personnel.

”We were stunned when the police swooped down on our homes a month after we put the pamphlets into mailboxes. They searched our houses on the basis of complaints made against us. But there are so many vendors who routinely do what we did,” she says.

The group’s pamphlets called on SDF families to think more carefully about the deployment to Iraq.

”The pamphlets were geared to generate debate on the SDF among family members. After all, getting the SDF to rethink their deployment is important for a large number of people who oppose Japan’s decision to send troops to Iraq,” says Kino.

A major bone of contention for activists is the unusually long period in detention and daily interrogation meted out to the prisoners, simply for distributing pamphlets.

Says Teranaka, ”the harassment sends a chilling message to activists because they are up against a police system that has a poor human rights record (on issues) such as access to lawyers during interrogation.”

Public opinion polls show that almost half of the Japanese public opposed the move by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to send the SDF to Iraq in January, marking the first post-World War II SDF dispatch to a military zone.

Some 1,000 SDF troops are expected to be sent to Iraq, and several hundreds are already there, the last batch having left the country in late January. The dispatch of troops was traumatic for Japanese, who have turned their back on military activities after the defeat of their country at the end of World War II. The post-war Constitution was designed to prevent Japan from having a military that can have expansionist capabilities, after their occupation of neighbouring countries in the thirties and forties.

But one year after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, that hard-earned pacifism is on a risky path.

Activists point to the consequences of sending the SDF to Iraq – Japan, as a U.S. ally, now faces bomb threats from terrorist groups against the Iraq war and increasing security measures have begun to target peace activism preemptively.

Professor Manabu Ishizuka, who teaches constitutional law at Asia University, says the Tachikawa case is one of several incidents in which anti-government protests are not viewed as political rights but as subversive and criminal.

”The rising risk from terrorism is masking the real issue, which is that the government is responsible for terrorism threats because the decision to send SDF to Iraq was not supported by the majority of the public,” he says.

A similar incident was recorded on Mar. 3, when the public security section of the Metropolitan Police Department arrested a local government employee for distributing anti-war pamphlets of the Communist Party.

The media reported the case, which occurred in November, as an extremely rare one – the last arrest of a public servant for violating a law that prohibits them from engaging in politics even after work hours, on the basis of observing neutrality, was 21 years ago.

Yet another case that stirred Japan was the resignation in April last year of a former ambassador, Naoki Amaki, who publicly opposed Japan’s sending SDF troops to Iraq.

In his immensely popular book, ‘So Long, Ministry of Foreign Affairs’, released in October, Amaki accuses the government of virtually firing him because he expressed an opinion against government policy.

Ishizuka suggests that terrorism is leading to a dangerous situation for political and human rights activism as the government beefs up its call for not showing ”weakness against terrorism”.

He says he worries about the support this tension could bring to proposals by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to change Japan’s Constitution, which prohibits military involvement overseas. Of particular focus is Article 9, under which the country renounces war.

Constitutional reform is planned for 2007. The conservative LDP is calling for new laws to legalise the dispatch of the SDF to support the U.S. ‘war on terrorism’ in the future.

”In the face of a terrorist attack, people would be more inclined to support a militarily active Japan. This would be disastrous for activists who face the danger of being arrested for simply demanding their rights,” he says.

Excerpt: