Buraku Liberation News, November 1997 issue (N0.99)
‚Q. Incidents Related to Buraku Discrimination Occur in Various Sectors of Society.
The Buraku Liberation Research Institute publishes every year a compilation of information on typical incidents related to Buraku discrimination, entitled "Discriminatory Incidents Continuously Occurred Throughout Japan" (Japanese language).
The followings are the incidents classified into 13 groups in its latest edition.
- A discriminatory investigation made by Jindai Corporation, a detective agency, was uncovered. Through several rounds of fact finding sessions and denunciation sessions, it was found out that they occasionally conducted investigations that led to Buraku discrimination and that they possessed a list of Buraku areas, similar to the so-called Buraku Lists locating the Buraku areas.
The company was given administrative guidance by Osaka Prefectural Government for violating its ordinance prohibiting detective agencies from inquiring and /or reporting whether any person lives in a Buraku area. - The numbers of vicious discriminatory propaganda have been increasing in cyber space as the spread of the personal computer has brought an information-oriented society.
- While only a few cases of marriage discrimination came to light, some of the victims filed suits for damages against those who broke off (and/or helped break off) the engagement, and received compensation.
- Regarding employment discrimination, it was discovered that several corporations still do not use a uniform application form in recruitment of new employees.
The uniform application form is to be submitted by all the job applicants of graduating high school students to the companies to which they apply, as an alternative to application forms originally prepared by each company.
While the original forms required applicants to fill in the complete address of their domicile ( information which may be used to detect if they are of Buraku origin), the uniform application form requires the applicants to fill in only the name of the prefecture where she/he is legally domiciled.
Although the form was introduced in the 1970's, it has not yet been adopted by several corporations. - Discriminatory remarks and graffiti were witnessed at many workplaces in spite of the fact that corporations which have an in-house human rights enlightenment program have been recently increasing in number.
- Several inquiries were made by real estate agencies at local governments' offices to know the location of Buraku areas as a part of their investigation in relation to their trade.
- There were many discriminatory incidents in schools. In the case of pupils who discriminated against others, many of them were influenced by their parents and friends.
In addition, their derogatory remarks were prompted by quarrels and mere fun. On the other hand, several incidents came to light that teachers as well as professors made discriminatory remarks during their classes. - Discriminatory expressions were found in communities, such as street propaganda made by super rightist groups as well as derogatory posters placed on the street and posted on house windows by citizens.
- Government, local government and police officials as well as lawyers were involved in different kinds of discriminatory incidents.
- It was found out that some of the people in religion who are supposed to preach the equality of human beings had a deep-rooted prejudice. A Buddhist sect had distributed to its believers a book containing a sentence which aggravates marriage discrimination.
- While mass media should play an important role to eliminate consciousness of discrimination prevailing in society, some of them apparently reproduce such consciousness through their discriminatory publications and dramas.
- Discriminatory graffiti were found in many public places. A lot of anonymous discriminatory letters as well as telephone calls were sent to the offices of the Buraku Liberation League.
A survey conducted in 1993 by the Management and Coordination Agency that covered about sixty thousand households out of 603 Buraku areas in 36 prefectures disclosed the grave reality of Buraku discrimination.
Its statistics show that 33.2% of the respondents experienced human rights violations just because they lived in Dowa areas. Among the violations, marriage discrimination accounts for 24.2%, followed by community life (23.6%), communication at the workplaces (21.2%), and school life (16.3%).
As for the means to counter the human rights violations, 20.2% of the victims protested against the person who discriminated against while 22.4% consulted other people close to them.
However, only 0.6% reported either to the Justice Ministry's Regional Legal Affairs Bureau or the Commissioner for the Protection of Fundamental Human Rights.