Hokkaido Board of Education accuses Japan Probe of violating the human rights of students

James,
As we talked about before, we over at TPR are of the opinion that it’s numbers 1 to 3, especially 3.

Mr. Akiyama made no mention of the bullying being a particular problem, but it seemed pretty clear that he was worried about it being public, which is pretty much what MEXT has been saying.

This is kind of bittersweet, as this e-mail is damning evidence of the points I made a few weeks ago.

Furthermore, who is the secuirty chief for the Hokkaido school board to make such a demand? Who is he to interpret human rights violations? Are these things not the domain of the law and, hence, judges?

He quoted no law and gave no reasons, just lobbed a vague threat based on vague reasoning at you. Hell, he didn’t even have the decency to find out what your name was, which would have taken about ten seconds.

While we posted the same videos at roughly the same time and got no such e-mail, I have a feeling that you are not alone in being harrassed. You may be alone in not caving, though, for which you should be proud.

- Garrett of ＜a href=”http://www.transpacificradio.com/”>太平洋横断放送

PS: I’ll post about it tonight!

James,

What I see here is a lack of follow through. Akiyama sent you vague threats with no quoting of an actual statuate. If the student’s human rights were an issue, his parents would be writing to you.

Akiyama is trying to cover up the fact that his principals are incompetent. This is about PR, not the kids. If this were about the kids, you would have heard a reply. I find it personally offensive that prefectural level officials are wasting our tax money to cover up thier inability to do their jobs.

tarbash,

From a foreigner in the office?

We’ve had TONS of google search hits from related search terms like, “hokkaido bully youtube.” Many of them have awkward non-native phrasing. Some don’t, though. But we haven’t received an email yet, which leads me to believe that western journalists may be working something up.

Has to be a cover up. If this was really about the student, the parents would’ve been involved. Personally I think exposing bullying would benefit the student(and other victims) involved more than trying to remove the images from websites.

While I support James’ reaction, googling the news, I have found that it is not the case that Akiyama tried to cover it up. It is rather that school was accused by the media that school didn’t tried to cover the video up

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%E7%99%BD%E9%99%B5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH2SSo_M1sI

School was aware that the video was on the Internet.
School did not do anything about it.
The media blamed the school for it.

The reasons seem to be as follows.

(1)The boy who was bullied might get another bully by this video.

(2)The boys who were just looking at the incident and the boys who bulled him might get bullied from other section of society. (You guys bullied him, you are bad boys!! ….)

Ponta, I’ve been digging through the 2001 revision of the Juvenile Act and have two questions: were you referring to article 60 or paragraph 60, which enjoins officials to protect children?

A blurry image of a minor does not seem to violate the law. The names and likenesses of minors may not be released, but nowhere in the law does it say that the silhouettes of minors involved in news-related events cannot be broadcast or distributed. Minors are routinely quoted on TV with their faces blurred and voices distorted – sometimes discussing bullying.

If there is any problem with what Japan Probe or TPR did, it would be related to the consent of the victim and it would be an ethical, not a legal issue. In other words, if the distribution of the videos caused discomfort for the victim, there would be an argument that they should not be distributed. The bullies, while minors, made and publicly distributed the videos, so, faces blurred and names witheld to avoid legal trouble, I see no ethical quandary whatsoever in doing something that may cause embarrassment or hardship to the bullies – even without considering their actions.

Furthermore, the “chief of the School Security and Health Section at the Hokkaido Board of Education in Japan” has no authority to do anything more than make a request – the fact that he mentioned “in Japan” a few times, makes it sound like he thought he was addressing a blogger who was not in Japan, which blows a massive hole in his secondary-abuse idea. It also shows that he must have known he had no authority to make the request he made.
He cited no law and gave no explanation as to how or why Japan Probe’s linking to the videos, even if they had been visible, would adversely affect any student.

What seems far more likely, given the actions of school boards across Japan and the comments of Education Minister Ibuki, is that officials would like to see the problem disappear because it would be troublesome to deal with it and embarrassing to admit that they didn’t know how.

The language of the letter is vague and speaks of vague negative consequences, which is the lingo of government agencies and companies throughout Japan when they make unreasonable requests to cover their own asses, but want to make it seem as though they are trying to do something good. It’s doublespeak and should be given no credence.

My guess is that Japan Probe received a filled-in form letter and that James is not going to get a reply anytime soon.

To address your points above:
1) Possible, but unlikely. How many high school students in Hokkaido are going to come to Japan Probe, recognize the victim, and decide to start bullying him because of the video. It’s implausible.

2) Honestly, no one should shed a tear over the idea of people who would film themselves tormenting someone smaller and weaker, then publicize it getting bullied. They have it coming and then some. However, it is unlikely. Highly, highly unlikely.

3) The victim’s privacy was violated when the bullies filmed his maltreatment and posted it to websites. By the time the videos reached Thai national TV the images were far too obscured to identify the people in them. The bullies faces are better known, not because of these videos, but because of a video of the girl in a karaoke booth that she publicized.

4) See 3. Again, please clarify – a link? – on Juvenile Act article 60.

5) You’re absoutely right, but we can see from Mr. Akiyama’s e-mail how likely that is. The schools don’t seem to know what to do or how to do it. Even under ideal circumstances, they are getting very little help from Boards of Education or MEXT. Under more realistic circumstances, schools don’t seem to want to protect the children if it means making difficult decisions. We’ve already seen the refusal of school boards to dismiss teachers who bully students.