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▼ U.N. Rights Rapporteur Criticizes Passage of ‘Conspiracy Bill’
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TOKYO - The U.N. special rapporteur on the right to privacy, Joseph Cannataci, has criticized the enactment of a law targeting conspiracies to commit terrorism and other serious crimes on Thursday.
In an email to Reuters, Cannataci said the Japanese government had used "the psychology of fear" to push through "defective legislation."
"Japan needs to improve its safeguards for privacy, now even more so that this suspicious piece of legislation has been put on the statute books," he said in the email.
Cannataci wrote to Abe last month asking him to address the risk that the changes could "lead to undue restrictions to the rights to privacy and to freedom of expression."
The vote on the bill, which has divided the public, followed opposition party delaying tactics, protests and came days before the current session of parliament was set to end on June 18.
Japanese governments had tried three times previously to pass similar legislation, which officials say is needed to ratify a U.N. treaty aimed at global organised crime as well as to prevent terrorism as Tokyo prepares to host the 2020 Olympics.
"It's only three years until the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics and so I'd like to ratify the treaty on organised crime as soon as possible so we can firmly cooperate with international society to prevent terrorism," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters. "That's why the law was enacted."
The legislation would criminalise plotting and preparing to commit 277 "serious crimes" that critics such as the Japan Federation of Bar Associations note include acts with no obvious connection to terrorism or organised crime, such as sit-ins to protest construction of apartment buildings or copying music.
Opponents see the legislation as part of Abe's broader objective to increase state powers and fear ordinary citizens could be targeted, despite government assurances to the contrary.
Opposition Democratic Party leader Renho, who goes by one name, in a statement blasted the ruling party tactics and termed the law "brutal" legislation that violated freedom of thought.
Combined with a widening of legal wiretapping and the reluctance of courts to limit police surveillance powers, the changes could deter grassroots opposition to government policies, critics say.
To try to speed up passage of the law, the ruling bloc took the rare, contentious step of skipping a vote in an upper house committee and moving directly to a vote in the full upper house.
© Thomson Reuters 2017.
In an email to Reuters, Cannataci said the Japanese government had used "the psychology of fear" to push through "defective legislation."
"Japan needs to improve its safeguards for privacy, now even more so that this suspicious piece of legislation has been put on the statute books," he said in the email.
Cannataci wrote to Abe last month asking him to address the risk that the changes could "lead to undue restrictions to the rights to privacy and to freedom of expression."
The vote on the bill, which has divided the public, followed opposition party delaying tactics, protests and came days before the current session of parliament was set to end on June 18.
Japanese governments had tried three times previously to pass similar legislation, which officials say is needed to ratify a U.N. treaty aimed at global organised crime as well as to prevent terrorism as Tokyo prepares to host the 2020 Olympics.
"It's only three years until the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics and so I'd like to ratify the treaty on organised crime as soon as possible so we can firmly cooperate with international society to prevent terrorism," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters. "That's why the law was enacted."
The legislation would criminalise plotting and preparing to commit 277 "serious crimes" that critics such as the Japan Federation of Bar Associations note include acts with no obvious connection to terrorism or organised crime, such as sit-ins to protest construction of apartment buildings or copying music.
Opponents see the legislation as part of Abe's broader objective to increase state powers and fear ordinary citizens could be targeted, despite government assurances to the contrary.
Opposition Democratic Party leader Renho, who goes by one name, in a statement blasted the ruling party tactics and termed the law "brutal" legislation that violated freedom of thought.
Combined with a widening of legal wiretapping and the reluctance of courts to limit police surveillance powers, the changes could deter grassroots opposition to government policies, critics say.
To try to speed up passage of the law, the ruling bloc took the rare, contentious step of skipping a vote in an upper house committee and moving directly to a vote in the full upper house.
© Thomson Reuters 2017.
- June 21, 2017
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