Japanese Bishops: Governments’ state secrecy law betrays the Constitution
Tokyo ( AsiaNews) - The Special Law on State Secret is an "attack on the sovereignty of the people, respect for basic human rights and pacifism, the cornerstones of the Japanese Constitution . This is why we, the Japanese bishops, protest against its steamrolling and demand that similar laws never be proposed again". This is the sense of the document signed by the Permanent Commission of the Bishops' Conference of Japan, made public after the approval of the controversial decree - law.
According to the norm, passed after strong insistence by the Liberal Democratic Party in power in Japan, any issue defined "sensitive" by the government may be covered by state secrecy. In this way only government officials , and not Parliament, can deal with them. There will be no control by the Diet and every inquiry, journalistic or civil, may be interrupted for reasons of " national security".
The Japanese Church had already expressed its position against the norm before the vote, which took place on December 6. Following its approval, the members of the Standing Committee wanted to further underline: "The bill presents a danger of violating the three basic principles of the Constitution, namely the principle that sovereignty resides in the people, the respect of basic human rights and pacifism, as stated below. Such a significant bill must never be steamrolled without having sufficient discussion or offering convincing explanation. However, it was railroaded unilaterally by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and others by wielding majority power. We can never accept such conduct".
The bishops point out that the subordination of Parliament to the government is "a contradiction of the democratic system in Japan. Moreover, the definition of ' sensitive issue ' is too ambiguous. A democratic decision-making system is based on the sharing of information, but this decree blocks the right of the Diet to investigate the facts. By doing so undermines the right of the people to be sovereign".
Finally, the bishops stressed that "considering that this bill with such grave problems has caused much opposition and concern, it should have been determined only after hearing opinions from various fields and being carefully deliberated again and again. That is the way democracy should always be. We strongly protest the recent hasty vote and demand that such steamrolling never be carried out again in the future".
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