Posts Tagged ‘rights’

Police rounding up foreigners in Tokyo and making them take drug tests?

Arudou Debito has received reports from that police in Tokyo have been rounding up foreigners as they leave bars in Roppongi/Shibuya and making them take urine tests. A few posters on the Gaijin Pot forums have also mentioned the practice.

Debito apparently called the Azabu Police Department today and confirmed that the drug tests were taking place. Here is part of the transcript he has posted:

DEBITO: Do you have warrants to ask for urine samples?
OFFICER TESHIMA: I don’t have to answer that. Depends on the situation.
DEBITO: But you can’t ask for urine samples without a warrant, right?
OFFICER TESHIMA: We don’t always need a warrant. Depends on the situation.
DEBITO: What situations do you not need a warrant?
OFFICER TESHIMA: I don’t have to answer that.
DEBITO: But if they give you their permission for a sample, you don’t need a warrant?
OFFICER TESHIMA: If they cooperate, we don’t need a warrant.
DEBITO: What if they don’t cooperate?
OFFICER TESHIMA: I’m not going to answer that.

The police officer said that tests were taking place, but he denied that only foreigners were being targeted.

Even if they aren’t just targeting foreigners, it is pretty troubling to think that police are attempting to take urine samples from people on the street. Hopefully someone in the media will contact the police and try to get more information.

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Privacy scare after photo of princess posted on the INTERNET

A tiny photograph that may or may not show a member of the Japanese royal family was posted on Mixi (part of the scary internet). Somehow, this very dull photograph showing a girl in a school uniform smiling has created an uproar over what is supposedly a horrible violation of her privacy:

“It has not been confirmed whether the photo actually is of Princess Kako,” said a Gakushuin public relations official commenting on the leak. “We cannot provide any information on how the boy obtained the photograph.”

Noriyuki Kazaoka, Vice-Grand Steward of the Imperial Household Agency, said he hoped there would be no recurrences.

“We cannot confirm that it is (Princess Kako), but from the perspective of protecting private information, we think that generally, going ahead and posting photographs on the Internet without consent cannot be called appropriate behavior. We hope that this sort of thing does not happen again in the future.”

To view some photos of the princess that aren’t considered private, check out this Sankei article.

Related story: A bilingual tourism PR magazine published by the Japanese government has comic strips telling foreigners not to violate the rights of geisha by putting photos of them up on the internet.

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Policing The Japanese Police

Who will police Japanese policemen? These guys (who also happen to be police officers):

The National Police Agency (NPA) has decided to deploy special officers to supervise police interrogations, in an attempt to prevent police abuse of suspects under questioning.

The new measures, which will be introduced at police headquarters and local stations across the nation in April 2009, were incorporated into a set of new investigatory regulations finalized by the National Public Safety Commission on Thursday.

Interrogation supervisors will be deployed on a trial basis as early as the end of fiscal 2008.

Under the new measures, a new division to supervise police questioning will be set up at each police headquarters, staffed by a supervisor and an officer to patrol each police station under its jurisdiction.

A supervisor will also be stationed at the police affairs division at local police stations, and will oversee questioning by those sections in charge of actual investigations, such as the criminal affairs division.

The regulations cite seven investigative activities that will be subject to supervision:* Touching a suspect, except when inevitable;* Threatening a suspect by beating him/her or the furniture;* Words and actions that would make a suspect unnecessarily insecure or confused;* Force a suspect to perform certain actions or postures;* Giving favor to a suspect, or to offer or promise to do so;* Any words or actions that undermine the dignity of a suspect;* Interrogations between 10 p.m. through 5 a.m. the next day without permission from the head of a police station, or questioning that lasts more than eight hours a day.

Elderly Drivers In Japan

Japanese authorities are concerned about ever-growing numbers of traffic accidents involving elderly drivers, which has led the Tokyo government to start a new campaign aimed at reducing the number of old people driving cars. Here’s a TBS news report about it:

The report starts by introducing Tokyo’s oldest driver’s license holder, Seichi Koyama. The 102-year-old is confident of his driving ability. However, several recent fatal traffic accidents that made the news were caused by elderly drivers and there were about 7,000 accidents involving drivers over the age of 65 in 2007 (2.6 times greater than 10 years ago).

The Tokyo government has enlisted the help of local businesses to provide discounts to elderly people who have turned in their driver’s licenses. Examples shown in the video include free shipping of goods purchased at department stores, a 10% discount on Domino’s Pizza deliveries, and a 10% discount at expensive hotel restaurants. It is unclear how many of Tokyo’s 760,000 elderly drivers will accept the offer.

More details can be found in an Asahi Shinbun report:

Senior citizens who surrender their driver’s licenses will be eligible for discounts at 37 businesses in Tokyo, an incentive police hope will reduce fatal traffic accidents involving elderly motorists.

Hotels, restaurants and amusement parks are on board for the system starting April 1, Metropolitan Police Department officials said.

Police officials said it is likely the first time that various businesses have joined hands for such an endeavor.

The MPD has been campaigning to retrieve driver’s licenses from elderly drivers following revisions to the Road Traffic Law in 1998, but to little avail.

This time, police hope a financial incentive will do the trick.

For example, those who give up their licenses and receive identification certificates will be eligible for 10 percent off the bill when they dine at restaurants run by the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward.

Or, they will be able to purchase a book of 10 ride tickets at the Asakusa Hanayashiki amusement park in Taito Ward, for 700 yen, 300 yen cheaper than the normal rate of 1,000 yen.

Many elderly citizens are concerned that if they surrender their licenses, they would lose one of their most recognized forms of identification.

Foreigner Suffrage Bill Unlikely to Pass

Remember our previous post about a proposed law granting voting rights to permanent residents? It now seems likely that divisions within Japan’s main opposition party will prevent it from passing:

The split in the Democratic Party of Japan over a planned bill to grant permanent foreign residents voting rights in local elections has further deepened, with groups of advocates and skeptics holding separate meetings on the issue.

DPJ Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama has tried to bring the two sides of the conflict closer together, but with the issue tied to speculation over September’s party presidential election, it will be difficult to successfully resolve the problem.

Twenty-two DPJ lawmakers, including Vice President Katsuya Okada and House of Councillors member Yoshihiro Kawakami, attended the first meeting of proponents of the bill on Jan. 30.

[...]

On the same day the proponents’ group met 23 lawmakers, including senior House of Representatives member Kozo Watanabe–the party’s top adviser–and upper house Rules and Administration Committee Chairman Takeo Nishioka, attended the first meeting of a group of skeptics over the issue.

This group is also holding study meetings with outside experts when needed.

The skeptics group is calling for the party leadership not to apply a whip forcing lawmakers to vote in favor of the bill should it be submitted.

Voting Rights for Non-Citizens in Japan

An article published last week in the Yomiuri Shinbun reports that the Democratic Party of Japan is attempting to pass a law that would grant voting rights to foreigners:

With New Komeito also strongly demanding local suffrage for permanent foreign residents, DPJ lawmakers hope in the upcoming Diet session “to split the ruling camp by submitting the bill to the House of Councillors and call on New Komeito to endorse it,” according to one of the sources.

But some conservative lawmakers in the party are determined to block the resubmission.

“Looking at this constitutionally and from the state of the nation, there’s no way we can approve this,” one party conservative said.

The DPJ previously submitted the bill to the House of Representatives on two occasions–in 1998 and 2002–but it was scrapped after failing to pass both times.

New Komeito also submitted to the lower house in 2005 a bill for granting permanent foreign residents voting rights in local elections, and discussions have spilled over into the current Diet session.

The passing of any bill of this nature has been stopped in its tracks mostly due to deep-rooted resistance mainly in the Liberal Democratic Party.

Yoshihiro Kawakami, a DPJ upper house member, plans to call on supporters in the party and establish a league of Diet members aimed at resubmitting the DPJ’s bill.

In the new bill, a “principle of reciprocity” will be introduced, in which local voting rights would only be granted to permanent residents who hold the nationality of a country that allows foreigners to vote in elections.

Would it be a good idea to allow non-citizens to vote? Quite a few Japanese websites don’t think so, including the one where I found the image I used in this post. There is an element of sensationalism in the cartoons included in their fliers, but a few of the concerns they bring up are not entirely unreasonable.

Some of the arguments used by those opposing the rule include:

• If foreigners want to vote, they naturalize and become Japanese citizens.
• The Japanese constitution applies to the “Japanese people” [国民], so it would be unconstitutional to allow foreigners to vote.
• The fact that foreigners pay taxes does not entitle them to voting rights, as the constitution does not link tax payment to voting rights.
• Local governments often carry out the instructions of the national government, so limiting foreign voting rights to local elections could still give them undue influence over what the national government can or cannot do.
• Most countries in the world do not extend voting rights to non-citizens.
• Non-citizens could vote in the interest of their own national group, forcing policies onto Japan that might not be best for the country.
• Zainichi Koreans make up the majority of Japan’s permanent residents. While relations between Zainichi Koreans and Japanese people have improved greatly in the last 30 years, some Japanese view Zainichi Koreans with suspicion because nearly a forth of them belong to pro-North Korean groups, and the Zainichi community is sometimes viewed as a source of crime.
• Those unwilling to give up their foreign citizenship and become Japanese nationals could simply flee Japan if it finds itself in a dangerous situation. (See picture below)

Immigrantvoting.org has a list of countries that currently have laws granting voting rights to non-citizens, and it’s not very big. Countries such as New Zealand, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Chile, and Belgium have laws similar to the one the DPJ wants, while countries such as Australia, France, and United States do not have national laws granting permanent residents voting rights.

The Yomiuri article was kind of vague about the “principle of reciprocity” in the law, but such a principle could disqualify the citizens of more than a few countries.