Based on an essay by Katsuoka Kanji published in the monthly magazine Sound Argument, this article examines how the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism, or IMADR, founded by the Buraku Liberation League, came to exert influence as the central organizer of Japanese left-wing NGO activities at the United Nations. It discusses IMADR’s UN human rights NGO registration, the role of Kubota Hiroshi, the establishment of its Geneva office, and the reality of lobbying by left-wing NGOs for recommendations against Japan.

2020-01-10
Why has the Buraku Liberation League come to control Japanese NGO groups at the United Nations?
The following is from an essay by Katsuoka Kanji, published in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine Sound Argument, in the feature “What Is Corroding Japan from Within,” under the title “The ‘International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism’ That Controls Left-Wing NGOs in Switzerland.”
In this essay, Katsuoka demonstrates that the main actor engaged in activities to denigrate Japan at the United Nations is IMADR.
Readers know that I happened to discover this IMADR several years ago while searching online.
Just as I had known nothing about it until then, 99 percent of Japanese people must also have known nothing about it.
That is precisely why the Japanese people must go at once to the nearest bookstore to purchase this issue.
For if one merely subscribes to the Asahi and the like and watches NHK, one can understand nothing.
Not understanding — that is, remaining silent — only encourages evil.
Controlling Civic Organizations
There is an organization called the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism, abbreviated IMADR and pronounced “Imadar.”
For left-wing NGOs that use the United Nations, it is a kind of central headquarters.
The International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism is a United Nations human rights NGO, or nongovernmental organization, established in 1988 at the call of the Buraku Liberation League.
Recently, nationalist or conservative NGOs have also begun frequently going to the United Nations in order to counter left-wing NGOs, but the first barrier they encounter there is this International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism.
It is said that, even when conservative NGOs try to attend UN committee meetings, they are “excluded from the meetings” on the grounds that “they have not cleared matters with the leading organization that controls the movements of Japanese civic groups locally.”
For example, Yamamoto Yumiko, representative of Nadeshiko Action, says the following.
“When I was told, ‘Please communicate with the representative of the Japanese NGO that coordinates this committee,’ and contacted them, it turned out to be the Buraku Liberation League. That is the group that coordinates the Japanese participating organizations. They are registered as an official UN NGO under the name International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism.” (The Lie of “Comfort Women = Sex Slaves” Spread to the World by the United Nations)
Why has the Buraku Liberation League come to control Japanese NGO groups at the United Nations?
How did IMADR come to exercise such great influence at the United Nations today?
The Person Who Guided Left-Wing NGOs
The Buraku Liberation League is one of the Dowa organizations that follows the line of the prewar National Levelers’ Association.
The Buraku Liberation National Committee, founded in 1946, was renamed the Buraku Liberation League in 1955.
Because its first chairman, Matsumoto Jiichirō, ran as a candidate from the Socialist Party and became a member of the House of Councillors, the influence of the Socialist Party was originally strong.
However, from the 1960s onward, many executives were drawn into the Liberal Democratic Party’s Dowa measures program, which was aimed at breaking down the Liberation League, and internal conflict with Communist Party-affiliated executives intensified.
In the end, the latter withdrew from the Liberation League in 1970 and formed the National Federation of Buraku Liberation Movements, or Zenkairen, in 1976.
Even after that, the Socialist Party-affiliated Liberation League and the Communist Party-affiliated Zenkairen have remained in fierce opposition to this day.
After the Special Measures Law for Dowa Projects was enacted in 1969, the Liberation League, seeking to break through the domestic limits of the Dowa movement, began contacting the United Nations from 1976 onward and explored the internationalization of the Buraku liberation movement.
In that process, it encountered Kubota Hiroshi, a UN human rights officer at the United Nations Office at Geneva.
At that time in Japan, NGOs were still hardly known at all, and from the early 1980s onward, Kubota repeatedly explained that NGO lobbying was important at international conferences.
For example, he wrote as follows.
“If one becomes a UN NGO, not only attendance at human rights conferences, but also the right to speak there and the right to submit written statements are recognized. The scope of activity is broader than one might think. … However, up to the present, there has not been a single private organization from Japan that has become such an NGO registered with the Economic and Social Council, sent representatives to UN human rights conferences, and actively participated in international human rights protection activities. … Even an unregistered NGO can submit complaints concerning human rights violations to the United Nations, attend meetings as an observer, and has room for lobbying. … However, the fact that NGO lobbying is important at international conferences is almost completely unknown in Japan.” (Kubota Hiroshi, “The Role of NGOs in United Nations Human Rights Protection Activities,” United Nations, 62[2])
Kubota made similar arguments in many media outlets and spoke passionately about the importance of NGO activities at the United Nations.
Kubota’s concrete proposals were exactly like a ready-made boat for the Liberation League, which had been seeking to expand the Buraku liberation movement through the United Nations.
It was in January 1988 that, with Kubota’s advice, the Liberation League established the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism, with Liberation League Central Executive Committee Chairman Uesugi Saichirō as its chair.
Kubota died suddenly in a car accident in June 1989, but for IMADR, it can truly be said that he was its “birth parent.”
Tomonaga Kenzō, who was secretary-general of IMADR, stated clearly in a text mourning Kubota’s death, “Without his cooperation and advice, the kind of active international solidarity activities conducted today by the Buraku Liberation League and the Buraku Liberation Research Institute would not have existed” (Buraku Liberation, 299).
Suzuki Mieko, who was the only secretariat staff member when IMADR was first formed, also testified, “Minority people in Japan began going to the Human Rights Sub-Commission in Geneva from around 1983, and from around that time Kubota gave various kinds of advice to people coming to Geneva” (United Nations and NGO Practical Handbook).
Kubota devoted himself to the founding of IMADR and was even involved in editing the first issue of its English-language bulletin, peoples.
At the same time as IMADR, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations also frequently contacted Kubota and explored “what could be done by using the United Nations as a venue.”
By personally taking on the role of a “bridge” to the United Nations for the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, Kubota can probably be called the “chief culprit” who planted the seeds for the later comfort women uproar and the left-wing NGOs’ use of the United Nations.
Opposition Forces to IMADR’s Registration
However, IMADR’s registration as a “UN NGO” did not proceed smoothly.
That is because there was a force that fiercely obstructed it.
That force was the Communist Party-affiliated Zenkairen, the “natural enemy” of the Buraku Liberation League.
Zenkairen went all the way to Geneva, where the registration review for UN NGOs was held, and persistently appealed the “fact that the Buraku Liberation League, the main body behind the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism, is a violent organization.”
This may require some explanation.
Although the Buraku liberation movement has declined today, the Liberation League has a history, dating from the founding of the National Levelers’ Association, of frequently causing violent incidents under its struggle policy that “when an intention to insult us is shown through words or actions such as calling us eta or special buraku people, we will carry out thorough denunciation.”
Local governments, fearful and intimidated by the Liberation League, which resembled a gangster organization, also have a history of providing the Liberation League with huge subsidies (see Takagi Masayuki, New Dowa Problems and Dowa Organizations, and others).
Zenkairen’s obstruction of the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism’s UN NGO registration seems to have achieved a certain result.
This is because, both in the first review in 1989 and the second review in 1991, registration was postponed under “continued review,” and IMADR tasted bitterness.
The Establishment of the Geneva Office Proved Effective
However, in the end, the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism repelled Zenkairen’s obstruction campaign, and, while not quite “third time lucky,” it cleared the third review and obtained the long-awaited consultative status as a UN NGO in March 1993, the official qualification known as roster status.
One major reason for this was that, in 1991, IMADR set up an office in Geneva and stationed full-time secretariat staff there, Rebecca Martinson and later Tanaka Atsuko.
The fact that, today, Japanese NGOs that go to the UN headquarters in Geneva must inevitably be taken care of by IMADR can also be called the “result” of IMADR’s having been stationed in Geneva and having carried out UN lobbying activities since that time.
Yamazaki Suzuko, head of the Liberation League Central Women’s Movement Department, says the following.
“I went to New York three times and Geneva once, and there I really felt the role of IMADR. The significance of having consultative status, or rather, the fact that they had investigated in advance all the problem awareness held by the members of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, and provided us with all that information, such as that the education issue would be good for this committee member, or the domestic violence issue would be good for that committee member. I think that is what emerged as strict recommendations to the Japanese government.” (Buraku Liberation, 762)
Carrying out lobbying after grasping even each committee member’s “problem awareness” as information — such meticulous work cannot be done merely by traveling from Japan each time a UN committee is held.
It is possible precisely because they have an office on site and full-time secretariat staff stationed there.
Recently, one occasionally hears criticism that the United Nations has become a “nest” of left-wing NGOs, but there are reasons and a history behind that.
IMADR has truly played a pioneering role in that.
To be continued.