The Council for Human Rights Promotion started its activity on above mentioned objective (2) just after the completion of its report on human rights education. As part of its consideration, it conducted some hearings from related organizations.
Enjoinder of publication by administrative order, in order to provide relief for victims of damaging reporting, constitutes a prior restraint on expression and violates the prohibition on censorship in Article 21, Paragraph 2 of the Japanese Constitution, and is absolutely unacceptable, said the JCLU in an opinion presented 18 November to the Council for Human Rights Promotion, a body that advises the Minister of Justice.
The issue had arisen at a Council hearing to which it had invited reporters and editors from the Japan Newspaper Association. The official in charge from the Civil Liberties Bureau had indicated a desire to study enjoinder of publication by administrative order as a way to prevent media infringement on civil rights.
In its opinion, the JCLU said that relief for injury due to reporting should be completely independent of government. The JCLU requested that the Council has broad and careful discussions covering whether to include injury due to reporting as an area for relief by national human rights institutions (under the UN Paris Principles pertaining to such organizations) and whether relief should be delegated to an autonomous relief organization set up by mass media.
The Newspaper Association's "Civil Rights and Privacy Issues Study Committee" had also asked the Civil Liberties Bureau official to explain the true intent of his statement. On November 16, however, the official withdrew his statement, acknowledging that an explanation was inappropriate.
Meanwhile, how much to protect freedom of reporting and news gathering has become a point of debate in detailed discussions for a basic law on privacy protection that covers the private sector and has been proposed by the Subcommittee for the Study of Privacy Protection (part of the government's Center for the Promotion of an Information- and Communications-Intensive Society).
The JCLU also stated in its opinion that it would continue to track the issue in the future.