Japan Press Weekly

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2023 March 22 - 28 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Local Peace Committee: Don't provide young citizens' personal information to SDF

Accompanied by Japanese Communist Party Asahikawa City assemblypersons, the local Peace Committee on March 24 made a representation to Hokkaido's Asahikawa City Mayor Imazu Hirosuke, demanding that the city stop providing young citizens' personal information without their permission to Self-Defense Forces' recruiters.

In the representation, peace committee members also demanded that the city inform all young people and their parents of the system under which they can refuse the information provision.

The city government had allowed the SDF to have access to the residential registration, but it began providing information on potential recruits in print without their consent to the SDF in FY2022. Criticized by the JCP local assemblypersons, the city government in FY2023 established a system so that citizens can apply for the exclusion of their information from the list provided to the SDF.

According to Akahata, 18 out of 35 cities in Hokkaido have given out personal information of 66,992 young people to the SDF as of FY2022. Of the 18, only three cities have some sort of system in place for citizens to refuse the use of their information for SDF recruiting activities.

Past related article:
> 3 Hokkaido cities provide 60K citizens’ personal data to SDF recruiters [February 28, 2023]