Is Demonstration Terrorism?

The name of Shigeru Ishiba would be memorized as the first political leader in democracy who called civil demonstration terrorism. He, as Secretary General of Liberal Democratic Party, criticized demonstrators around the Diet building as noisy in his personal blog, saying “Simple yelling makes no fundamental difference from terrorism.” His unique contemplation invited a big question: How do you define terrorism? This is also a question against the Designated Secrecy Bill being discussed in the Diet. The Japanese would call it poking snake out of bush.

Before resembling protesters terrorists, Ishiba revealed his frustration with them. “Even now, a big voices of ‘block the Secrecy Bill’ is resonating out of our office building. Though I don’t know who they are, simply crying out their own opinion and disturbing other’s calmness will never be understood by public, regardless what group they are affiliated to,” he wrote. Three days after, he dropped his description about terrorism from his blog page and corrected the expression to “I think it to be different from what democracy should basically be.” He also apologized of his carelessness.

It is obvious that demonstration is not terrorism. In the process of analyzing what was he thinking, critics against him realized the equivocal description in defining terrorism in the Secrecy Bill. Incredibly the bill determines terrorism as follows; “activities of forcing the state or other individuals, or killing or destroying important facilities or other things in order to pose society uneasiness or fear.” The sentence has too many ORs to correctly define the meaning.

If the bill passes without any amendment on the terrorism clause, demonstrators would be arrested as commitment on terrorism, because it will be the government people who judge it as an act of terrorism or not. In addition to endless classification of governmental documents, no guarantee of objective oversight, and alienating the Diet from governmental information, there appeared another fault in the bill.

The opposite parties made concerted action to accuse Ishiba, releasing a joint statement to require thorough discussion over the bill. Afraid of the bill would not pass by the end of the session on Friday, Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshihide Suga, reiterated that civil demonstration is admitted by the Constitution as freedom of expression. However, the draft of new constitution made by LDP includes further regulation over fundamental human rights, putting people under stronger control of the government. No critic believes the seriousness of Ishiba and Suga when they referred to democracy.