The government continued to deny death row inmates advance information about the date of execution and notified family members of executions after the fact. Credible non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and foreign observers also reported that some facilities continued to provide inadequate food and medical care. NGOs, lawyers, and doctors also continued to criticize medical care in detention centers and immigration detention centers run by the police.
Reliable NGOs and foreign observers continued to report that pre-trial detainees were routinely held incommunicado for up to 23 days before being allowed access to anyone other than their lawyers or, in the case of foreign detainees, consular staff. The constitution guarantees freedom of speech and the press, and the government generally respected these rights in practice. The Department of Education's approval process for history textbooks, particularly its treatment of the country's 20th-century colonial and military history, continued to be the subject of controversy.
The law guarantees freedom of assembly and association, and the government generally respected these rights in practice. The law guarantees freedom of internal movement, travel abroad, emigration and repatriation, and the government generally respected these rights in practice. According to the agency's statistics, in June and July, of the approximately 247,000 evacuees, they were not in evacuation centers, and approximately 230,000 continued to live in temporary shelters.
Refugee groups continued to express concern about the government's high threshold of evidence in adjudicating asylum claims.
Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to Change Their Government
Access to basic services: Refugees continued to face the same patterns of discrimination as other foreigners: reduced access to housing, education and employment. Except for those who met the conditions for the right to work, individuals whose refugee status was pending or under appeal were ineligible to receive social assistance, leaving them completely dependent on overcrowded state shelters, illegal employment that was not subject to labor law control or NGO assistance. An NGO found that one immigration detention center improved access to health services by placing a part-time psychiatrist and clinical psychologist at the center.
Because some members of an ethnic minority group are of mixed descent and did not self-identify, it was difficult to determine their numbers in the Diet.
Corruption and Lack of Transparency in Government
Financial disclosure: The law requires members of the Diet to disclose their income and assets (other than ordinary savings), including ownership of land, buildings, securities and vehicles, but does not require disclosure of assets, income or collateral. relations of spouses and dependent children. Public access to information: By law the public has the right to access government information and the law was effectively implemented.
Governmental Attitude Regarding International and
Discrimination, Societal Abuses, and Trafficking in Persons
In June, the Japan Confederation of Trade Unions released survey results showing that about 49 percent of working women had been victims of sexual harassment or violence at work, although 31 percent of those women had not complained or sought counselling. In an incident in June that sparked a national debate, a female member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly who was speaking on maternal and child health care issues was taunted by a male member of the assembly with taunts such as, "Why don't you get married?" The MP later apologized and resigned from his political party, but retained his seat in the Assembly. The Cabinet Office for Gender Equality continued to study policies and monitor developments.
Despite Prime Minister Abe's introduction of policies to encourage women's participation in the workplace, NGOs continued to claim that the implementation of anti-discrimination measures was insufficient, pointing to discriminatory provisions in the law, unequal treatment of women in the labor market, and low representation of women in high-level elected bodies. NGOs urged the government to abolish a six-month waiting period set by law for women but not men before remarriage, eliminate different age minimums for marriage depending on gender, and give married couples a choice of to allow surnames. The law requires birth entries in the family register to specify whether a child is born in or out of wedlock.
Another legal provision that a child born within 300 days of a divorce is presumed to be the divorced father's child resulted in an unknown number of children not being registered. According to the NPA, 317 child abuse cases from January to June resulted in the arrest of 327 people, an increase of approximately 44 percent for both cases and suspects, while 10. International child abductions: On April 1, the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Parental Child Abduction entered into force in.
A total of 1,699 people with disabilities nationwide suffered abuse from family members, care facility workers or employers in the first half of 2013, according to the first national survey conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. The agency also did not penalize employers who failed to register foreign teachers in the system. The law emphasizes the preservation of Ainu culture, but lacks some provisions that Ainu groups have demanded, such as recognition of land claims, reserved seats in the Diet and local assemblies, and an apology from the government for past policies.
In August, a Hokkaido politician in the Sapporo city assembly posted a message on Twitter claiming that there were "no more Ainu people" and criticizing. In 2012, the Ainu Party was founded with the aim of electing Ainu individuals to the Diet, and the party ran an unsuccessful lower house candidate in a Hokkaido district in the December 2012 general election. Hokkaido University refused to return the remains to them, claiming that a succession system of property, including management of family graves by the eldest son, was in place in the 1930s and that the claimants were unable to establish legitimate family ties to prove with the remainder.
The Supreme Court has yet to issue a ruling on the man's second son, born in 2012 and the subject of a separate case pending in the Osaka Family Court. In 2013, school officials persuaded an HIV-positive applicant to a Tokyo-area medical school to withdraw his.
Worker Rights
No law prohibits discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS, although non-binding Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare guidelines state that firms should not terminate or not hire individuals based on their HIV status. Collective bargaining was common in the private sector, although some businesses changed their form of incorporation to a holding company structure, not legally considered an employer, to circumvent employee protections under the law. Inspectors from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and local immigration inspectors under the Ministry of Justice inspected workplaces employing trainees under the TITP.
The prescribed government response to non-compliance is to issue warnings and advisories and ban companies from future participation in TITP for a period of one to five years. By the end of the year, the government had not prosecuted any cases of forced labor in the TITP program. Children between the ages of 13 and 15 are only allowed to do "light work" and children under 13 are only allowed to work in the entertainment industry.
According to the latest statistics, compiled in 2012 by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, 16.1 percent of the population earned an annual income below the poverty line of 1.22 million yen ($11,500). The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is responsible for the enforcement of laws and regulations governing wages, working hours and safety and health standards in most industries. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry covers ISH standards for the mining industry, and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism is responsible for ISH standards in the maritime industry.
Unions continued to criticize the government for failing to enforce the law on maximum working hours, and it was widely accepted that workers, including those in government jobs, regularly exceeded the hours set out in the law. From April 2013 to March 2014, surviving family members submitted 784 applications to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare seeking recognition of a deceased person. The ministry officially acknowledged 336 such victims during the year, but labor rights NGOs claimed that the number of victims was in fact much higher.
Reports of abuse in the TITP were common, including injuries due to unsafe equipment and inadequate training, non-payment of wages and overtime. Nevertheless, officials within the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare frequently stated that these resources were. Others claim death from overwork, discrimination in the prices of accommodation, forced deportation and work-related injury.
