Friday, April 09, 2010

Arudou's speech to UN Special Rapportuer on Human Rights

I hope to have a new post once a week for the time being, and occasionally finish and post a few still relevant drafts:

...we are not officially registered — or even counted sometimes — as genuine residents. We are not treated as taxpayers, not protected as consumers, not seen as ethnicities even in the national census....According to government polls and surveys, we do not even deserve the same human rights as Japanese...
.Debito Arudou Japan Times.

A well-written speech, at least from my point of view. Will it make any difference? I will wager no and pray* (without faith) that I am wrong. Doubt I will be though since we've been reading and saying the same things for years and years and years. The fact is that the whole issue is not important enough to most citizens to care much about except for the occasional sympathizing with affected gaijin.** I think Debito's final paragraph says it all, especially the plea for help outside of Japan. Don't expect much inside.

*Are an agnostic's prayers answered?

**An innocent, neutral term that simply means gaikokujin. We know it is innocent and neutral because many people use it all of the time mostly, but no longer exclusively, for those of certain non-Eastern ethnic origin.

2 comments:

  1. Our Man finds himself more in agreement with Debito-san as time goes on. Must be losing his marbles (Our Man, not Debito).

    Guess it happens to us all eventually (coming round to Debito's point of view, not losing marbles).

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  2. Lost most of mine long ago. Lost the last few recently. Has not affected my opinion of Debito. Other than his admiration of Michael Moore, I don't disagree with much of what he has written.

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