A few people must have seen a diplomat to pronounce slang as
seriously as Mr. Hideaki Ueda did. As a human rights envoy to the United
Nations, Ueda scolded noisy audience during his speech in a meeting in Geneva,
screaming “Don’t laugh! Why are you laughing?” Then, he reiterated “Shut up.”
Although he was successful in calming down, with freeze, the conference room
for a moment, he has been pointed at and laughed by the world after the scene
was uploaded on Youtube. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzItB8blgXg) He eroded
national interest of Japan by revealing low English efficiency of Japanese
diplomats.
At that time, Ueda and other delegates were discussing the
justice system in Japan. Ueda was making argument against the criticism of a
delegation of Mauritius that there is a practice not permitting a suspect to
have a legal representative present during questioning. After emphasizing that
Japan is one of the most advanced countries in the field of human rights, Ueda
looked like lost his temper to the laughter of the audience.
If he had said that “Well, even though we are on our way to
establish complete legal system, we are still proud of our achievements in
protecting human rights. It would not be correct manner to disturb an exercise
of building a common notion by laughing, scolding, or making some noises, fellow
delegates,” that would not be a problem.
There are some lessons. Firstly, Japanese diplomats need to
study English harder. “Shut up” is categorized into slang, which is not used in
official situation. For professional diplomats in the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, the most important job is to maintain organizational integration, as
well as bureaucrats in other ministry would do, spending time for studying
foreign language away. In the offices abroad, they are too busy in dealing with
inside jobs to have opportunities to make conversation with foreigners.
Secondly, study more about their home country. Japan is not
so much advanced in legal system as he was proud so much. There are some cases,
in which prosecutors fabricated the reports of interview to a suspect to make
him/her guilty. The government of Japan is reluctant to assure the transparency
of interview to a suspect, trying to allow prosecutors having closed inquiry
when there is a possibility of negative effect on their investigation. Those
are not what a democratic government would do.
Thirdly, stop despising small countries. Backed by economic
power, the delegate of Japan always tries to show their country bigger than
actual size. If it had not been Mauritius but a delegate from on of the Group 8
countries, he would not even make an argument.
After all, a diplomat needs to realize that every word he
delivers may be broadcast to the world immediately.
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