The law about regulation of the act which attracts children using the Internet opposite-sex introduction sites etc. was enacted in the Diet held now.
They say that dating sites are criminal hotbed in Japan, and it became the excuse of legislation. However, such argument is the product of reports based on police announcements and developed campaign by the National Police Agency. The cause of an increase of the crime resulting from dating sites is complex reflection of the cases have characteristic of can be arrested efficiently, and aggravation of a socio-economical situation.
The punishment to a child is wastepaper about the Stockholm Declaration and agenda. Carrying out, the Japanese Government performed hypocritical legislation.
The Government explains that Juvenile Law will be applied to the child punished is protected legally. However, sanctions sufficient by just being arrested are imposed on her/him. The expulsion from school from a school etc. leads the future to being influenced greatly.
In the stage of preparation of bill creation, the view that the child who decided that the Stockholm Declaration guarantees not to punish child who was poverty in developing countries was shown. In advanced nation Japan, the child blessed economically are not the candidate for application of the Declararation, they were taken to task. However, also in Japanese society, the difference of wealth and poverty is existing. The child who is not blessed economically, even if blessed economically in any way, she/he wishes to be released from a mental oppression, she/he may ask for money. There is no just reason these children are excluded from the candidate for application of the Stockholm Declaration.
In the process of bill deliberations, that a child's right of opinion manifestation was not guaranteed have once, either. This is deviation from the fundamental soul of the Convention on the Rights of the Child which makes a child the subject person of a right. Since it was the bill which is secured by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and which conceived the danger that the right of privacy, an informational right, the freedom of playing, the freedom of association, etc. would be oppressed beyond necessity, especially the opinion of a child should have been respected. Protection of the child by this law should be called right-paternalism of the state as a father.
In order to justify a child's punishment, in the result of the questionnaire which the National Police Agency carried out in December, 2002, it is answered that about 80% approves of punishment. This shows that the meaning of the Stockholm declaration is not fully established in Japanese society, and is also the proof of the thing to depend on administration and which was insufficient until now. This law that imputes the neglectful responsibility for administration to a child is not allowed positively. When this law was enacted, and fixing the view the side to buy takes responsibility, it becomes a negative factor.
As the report of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations has pointed out about the article 17 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, intervention of administration to media is chiefly performed by the police, and has many problems.
http://www.nichibenren.or.jp/en/activities/statements/20030601.html
ECPAT Japan STOP in Tokyo has participated in the campaign of the National Police Agency positively, in response to the fact that the information on the police. Although it is an insufficient result of thought, the responsibility of having participated in establishment of this law that oppresses a child's right unfairly positively is so large. It should be criticized severely and it should explain to child. Although respect is expressed to the past efforts for for extermination of the child prostitution, this fault is not allowed.
About the problem in prostitution of a child in Japan, consideration of the education to child is overwhelmingly insufficient with the education to adult. With offering sufficient information to a child, you should still strive for the prevention with sufficient mental care to the child who attains to prostitution himself. However, as a tendency of Japanese society in recent years, it is sex education. Taking up a concrete problem has a trend as if it was a taboo. If such education is performed in a school, pressure will be applied from some conservative newspaper publishing companies etc., and a school and the board of education are also often seen align with it. We have to change just such situation.
It protests anew. This law is bad law which also infringes the Constitution of Japan also at the Convention on the Rights of the Child and which does not take care of child. Any child wishes to be happy, even if she/he runs to prostitution. We must not disturb her/his human life since her/his minor fault.
Having peaceful heart for children,
June 8, 2003
Katsunori Tanaka
Representative, Nerima Citizens' Association for Privacy