Amidst Global Concern About Fukushima, Japanese Government Wants More Secrecy

October 30, 2013 in Montana

by lizard

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and his liberal majority in parliament are trying to push through secrecy legislation that will dramatically impact the ability of journalists to report on things the public needs to know about, like the world’s worst nuclear disaster ever:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government is planning a state secrets act that critics say could curtail public access to information on a wide range of issues, including tensions with China and the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

The new law would dramatically expand the definition of official secrets and journalists convicted under it could be jailed for up to five years.

Japan’s harsh state secrecy regime before and during World War Two has long made such legislation taboo, but the new law looks certain to be enacted since Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party-led bloc has a comfortable majority in both houses of parliament and the opposition has been in disarray since he came to power last December.

I wonder if activists like Mochizuki, who writes the Fukushima Diary, will face jail time for his coverage if this draconian legislation gets passed into law.

We, the citizens of the world, need to know the extent of the threat we are facing. A government-imposed media blackout is a threat to all of us.