This chapter examines how UN Special Rapporteurs promote distorted narratives about Japan’s media freedom, contradicting observable realities.

The article challenges UN Special Rapporteurs’ credibility by contrasting their claims of media repression in Japan with the country’s visibly robust press freedom.

2017-06-27
This is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Waving the brocade banner.
The UN operatives’ bag of tricks.
By Furumori Yoshihisa, Washington-based contributing correspondent for Sankei Shimbun.
The true identity of the grotesque creature and its lurking spirits that arrogantly proclaim absurd anti-Japan criticism.
The monster called a “Special Rapporteur.”
“To claim that in Japan the government suppresses news media, restricts press freedom, and stifles criticism of the administration”—such an assertion would be taken as a bad joke by anyone living in today’s Japan.
It is far too removed from the reality before our eyes.
One need only look at Asahi Shimbun’s daily, large-scale campaigns attacking Prime Minister Abe Shinzo.
Or observe TBS Television’s nightly biased reporting and commentary condemning the ruling Liberal Democratic Party administration.
Few countries in the world allow such an abundance of freedom for newspapers and television stations to attack the government and those in power.
Yet an American academic labeled a UN Special Rapporteur goes around international forums proclaiming that Japan is a country of speech suppression where freedom of expression is trampled.
David Kaye, an American designated as the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, delivered a report on Japan at the council in Geneva on June 12.
The report essentially claimed that the Japanese government suppresses press freedom.
Another UN Special Rapporteur, Joseph Cannataci from Malta, released a letter in late May expressing opposition to the anti-terrorism conspiracy bill then under deliberation in the Japanese Diet, addressing Japan’s opposition parties.
The content misunderstood the bill’s substance and presented a one-sided opposition.
What, then, are these UN Special Rapporteurs?
(To be continued.)