Japan Press Weekly

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2024 July 17 - 23 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

As demanded by JCP, Dazaifu City decides not to provide young residents’ personal data to SDF recruiters

Akahata learned on July 18 that while the number of local municipal governments which provide personal information of citizens aged 18 and 22 without their consent to Self-Defense Forces’ recruiters has been increasing, the government of Fukuoka’s Dazaifu City in March decided that it will stop the provision of such data to the SDF. This outcome was achieved through the Japanese Communist Party-led efforts in the city assembly.

The Dazaifu City government in fiscal 2021, on demand from the SDF Fukuoka Provincial Cooperation Office, offered in paper a list of names, addresses, gender, and ages of 1,400 citizens who are either at the age of 18 or at the age of 22, normally the graduation ages for high schools and colleges. Since then, this practice has continued.

In May 2023, JCP City Assemblymember Koutake Aya learned about this fact from news reports and launched a signature-collection campaign calling for a halt to the provision of young citizens’ personal information to the SDF and for establishing a system enabling those who do not want their personal data to be given to the SDF to apply for exclusion from the city-compiled list. One month later, the JCP lawmaker, together with some city assemblypersons who supported her demand, submitted to the city authority 511 signatures in protest.

In September 2023, seeking to increase public opposition to the city government’s act of providing citizens’ personal information to the SDF without their consent, a JCP supporters’ group in the city held a study meeting on this issue with 50 people, including parents of targeted children and independent assemblymembers, participating.

In the September and December sessions of the city assembly, JCP Koutake brought up a case in which SDF recruiters made a door-to-door approach to talk with young residents based on the city-provided data, and demanded that the city government stop supplying the personal data to the SDF. Along with Koutake, independent members who attended the study meeting made the same demand by saying that the municipal government should put the protection of its residents’ fundamental human rights before the defense authority’s cooperation request.

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