Japan Press Weekly

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2007 October 3 - 9 [CIVIL RIGHTS]

Lawsuit filed against SDF monitoring of the public

Four Sendai City residents on October 5 filed a lawsuit at the Sendai District Court demanding that the Self-Defense Force put an end to its activities of monitoring and collecting information on the public.

This was the first suit seeking a judicial declaration of illegality of the SDF surveillance of citizens’ activities since the Japanese Communist Party revealed it by publishing SDF internal documents in June.

The documents showed that the Ground SDF northeast region intelligence security unit monitored rallies and demonstrations held between January and February 2004 in Sendai City in opposition to the SDF dispatch to Iraq. Three of the four plaintiffs are representatives of organizations that called for those activities.

At a press conference, lawyer Yoshioka Kazuhiro said, “The SDF surveillance operation is an illegal act committed by the state in violation of the rights to privacy as well as the right freedom of thought and conscience.”