Japan’s parliament has passed a controversial «anti-conspiracy» bill which critics say could be used to curb civil liberties across the country.
«The law to punish terrorism preparation has just (been) enacted, » he said Thursday. «We would like to implement the law appropriately and effectively in order to protect the lives and the assets of the Japanese people.»
But the Japanese Bar Association said in a statement the law would «highly likely infringe civil liberties, » adding under the legislation people protesting a building site could be imprisoned.
In a letter to the Japanese government on May 18, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy, Joseph Cannataci, criticized the breadth of the legislation, including the wide range of crimes which people can be arrested for planning.
«I am concerned by the risks of arbitrary application of this legislation given the vague definition of what would constitute the «planning» … and given the inclusion of an overbroad range of crimes … which are apparently unrelated to terrorism and organized crime, » he said.
‘Substantial expansion of police power’
Under the new laws, it will make it illegal to plan to commit 277 criminal actions, from arson to copyright infringement.
Koichi Nakano, political science professor at Tokyo’s Sophia University, told CNN the new legislation «fundamentally» changed Japan’s legal system.
