简体中文
The Justice Ministry plans to conduct its first survey on discrimination against foreign residents in Japan to grasp the true situation of racist rallies and bigoted actions that persist around the nation.
Starting in November, the ministry will send questionnaires to 18,500 foreign residents 18 years of age or older through 37 local governments, such as Sapporo, Tokyo’s Minato Ward, Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka, which are home to many non-Japanese.
The questionnaires will be written in 13 languages, including Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Portuguese.
The survey will ask such questions as: “Have you experienced discrimination on grounds that you are a foreign national?” and “Have you seen or heard about acts of discrimination against foreigners?”
The respondents will be asked to provide specific cases.
A public-interest foundation will analyze the results of the survey, and the ministry will release the analysis within this fiscal year, which ends in March 2017.
The ministry plans to use the survey results to work out future policies on human rights.
The number of foreigners who have lived in Japan for more than three months or are special permanent residents exceeded 2.3 million as of the end of June this year, the largest figure ever.
The ministry has distributed posters and conducted other activities urging the public to respect the human rights of non-Japanese.
However, blatant acts of discrimination have continued.
Through its legal affairs bureaus around Japan, the ministry has received consultations from foreign residents who have suffered from discrimination.
The ministry accepted 85 cases as “human rights violation incidents” in 2015.
In one case, a non-Japanese resident said, “When I called a business hotel to make a reservation, I was rejected because I was a foreigner.”
Other complaints in previous years include: “My request for renting an apartment was rejected,” “My child was bullied at school” and “A barber shop would not accept any foreign customer.”
Hate speech rallies have also been held in various parts of the country since several years ago.
According to a ministry survey, 1,152 demonstrations or street propaganda campaigns that used hate speech were confirmed in Japan during the three-and-a-half-year period from April 2012 to September 2015.
The ministry issued warnings to organizers of those rallies, saying they were committing human rights violations.
A law calling on the central and local governments to take measures to eradicate hate speech took effect in June this year.
The ministry deemed it necessary to look into the real conditions of discrimination to develop more effective educational measures for the public.
(THE ASAHI SHIMBUN)
