1st Quarterly, 2007 No.143

Police Arrest Internet Discrimination Suspect

---

On July 5, Aichi Prefectural Police arrested a 26-year-old unemployed man charged with defamation after he named and made defamatory remarks about a company located in a Buraku district in Aichi Prefecture. The suspect admitted to the crime and stated, "I did it just for fun."

According to the police, the man created a personal website from his home in February and uploaded information that included the actual names of Buraku communities in Aichi Prefecture. Of the company in question, he wrote, "It is a dubious factory. It gives off a terrible smell." The man was located after police examined connection records on his website's host server.

The suspect found a number of Buraku districts in Aichi, took photos of the buildings in the districts, and uploaded the photos along with maps of the Buraku districts. He also created a bulletin board on which visitors to the site could post messages. Some visitors posted messages that included the names of Buraku districts in neighboring prefectures.

The company hosting the server deleted the website upon the request of the Nagoya Legal Affairs Bureau in February this year. However, the site had already been visited more than 10,000 times. In March this year, BLL Aichi filed a criminal complaint with the Aichi Police alleging that the suspect, who was unknown at the time, had caused mental suffering in the company and its employees.

---

| Back | Home |