Anti-Hate Speech Bills to Discuss

The leading coalition in the Diet, Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, submitted a bill for regulating hate speech to the House of Councillors. Since Democratic Party has already made its original bill last year, a basis for discussing hate speech was established. While discrimination and racism have been spreading in Japan these years, freedom of speech needs to be guaranteed to the citizen. Philosophy of each party will be tested in the discussion.

Hate speech is a kind of demonstration against foreign residents, namely the Koreans, with discriminative massages, including “Kill them” or “Get out.” According to a survey by Ministry of Justice, 1152 hate speeches were made in all over Japan for three and half years until last September, meaning one hate speech everyday. It is embarrassing data for a democracy.

Democratic Party of Japan, now integrated to Democratic Party, submitted Racial Discrimination Elimination Policy Promoting Bill last May. Reflecting International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the bill prohibits hate speech as a form of racial discrimination. It deals with racial discrimination in broad terms.

Mostly a year later, LDP and Komeito submitted Anti-Hate Speech Bill. It defines hate speech as “unjust discriminative speech in order to generate or induce discriminative mind, fanning exclusion from a community.” It required the national government to make policies for consultation or education to eliminate discriminative speech. To the people, the bill demanded efforts for achieving a society free from discriminative speech.

However, the bill from the leading parties does not have provision of punishment. An organization of lawyers and scholars delivered an urgent statement that assessed the bill as weak. “It is necessary for the bill to declare that hate speech is unlawful,” describes the statement. The organization also indicated a possibility of discrimination against overstaying foreigners, if the law would protect only legal foreign residents.

It is actually not easy to distinguish hate speech from ordinary demonstration criticizing someone. But, if the law only presents a principle of anti-discrimination, it will not have any viable effect. By accurately defying hate speech, punishment can be applied to really malicious hate speech. Lawmakers need to make every effort to conceptualize hate speech for establishing a society conscious of human rights.