Contrasting Sankei’s reporting with Asahi’s front-page framing, this essay argues that the UN Human Rights Council is portrayed as impartial despite evidence of dysfunction, while China’s suppression of press freedom goes unchallenged.

2016-03-09

Yesterday’s front page of the Asahi Shimbun proved just how malicious they are.

At the same time, it vividly demonstrated that the organization is dominated by people with skins three thousand layers thick.

Recently, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for the first time, stated at a relevant United Nations committee that the understanding circulating internationally regarding the so-called “comfort women” issue is mistaken.

The Sankei Shimbun reported this immediately, noting that an Austrian female parliamentarian promptly objected, followed by a Chinese female committee member who raised her voice hysterically—adding an explanation that this is China’s habitual tactic to keep Japan confined as a criminal.

South Korea and China capitalized on U.S. occupation policies that turned Japan into a “political prisoner.”

Although they are fellow Asians, China has continued, for seventy years after the war, to make statements in international forums aimed at keeping Japan locked as a “political prisoner” in order to maintain its own regime.

Because their conduct will not improve today, tomorrow, or the day after, Sankei also correctly reported that China would lead renewed slander against Japan in response to the Foreign Ministry’s first rebuttal of these wholly mistaken recommendations.

By contrast, the Asahi Shimbun avoided these realities entirely and, astonishingly, published an article stating that a protest letter had been sent to the Foreign Ministry—just as previously described.

And today, this utterly irresponsible and haphazard body known as the UN Human Rights Council—

one of the most shameful institutions in the world today.

Every person affiliated with it deserves the torments of King Enma in hell, yet the Asahi Shimbun portrayed them as if they were a fair and impartial body, placing them—of all places—on the left side of the front page, as though delivering divine revelation.

At this point, there is no path left but to shut down this newspaper and its subsidiary television networks and suspend their broadcasts.

This is no longer a time to say, “There is no medicine for fools.”

Not only must they be shut down, they must be made to pay in full for the enormous damage they have continued to inflict on Japan and the Japanese people.

Do the members of the Human Rights Council, the Asahi Shimbun, and those who have echoed them know that they have never once issued a recommendation against China—a country that is among the world’s largest and worst human-rights-suppressing states, that crushes freedom of expression, and that repeatedly engages in hate speech against Japan—while standing alongside South Korea as one of the world’s largest prostitution exporters?

Above all, the fact that such a country has served as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for seventy years after the war makes it abundantly clear that the United Nations is a fundamentally unreliable organization.

The following is conclusively demonstrated by page 19 of the March 8 issue of Newsweek Japan, “Xi’s Regime Aims for Complete Control of the Media” (see the chapter published on March 4 for the full text).

[Omitted]

When authorities are openly crushing press freedom, there is virtually no room for journalists with a critical spirit to operate.

In Reporters Without Borders’ 2015 Press Freedom Index, China ranked 176th out of 180 countries.

China’s rating has remained at the bottom level for more than a decade, with no sign of improvement.

Xi Jinping appears intent on completely cutting off the breath of journalism.