The story below appeared in the Yomiuri Shimbun on August 19th, 2013, announcing that the leading members of the UN Human Rights Council has created a Commission of Inquiry to travel to Japan to hold a new round of  interviews with  the surviving relatives of 15 to 20 Japanese who were abducted and taken to North Korea in the 1970’s.

A new United Nations Human Rights Council, Commission of Inquiry! The N. Korean abductions occurred in the 1970’s and have been discussed, argued over and investigated numerous times. The cases have been settled by and large for 30 years.
However, today, there are thousands of internationally abducted children whose abductors are given safe harbor in Japan by the Japanese government. Yes, today. They are not grown into adults; they are children –  now – in their growing, developmental years.

Yet the U.N has thus far completely ignored this problem,  the stealing of children over the border for the express purpose of denying  children and parents’ rights with full knowledge and assistance of the Japanese government.

Within Japan, 150,000 children permanently lose a parent  every year.  It is a manufactured circumstance in which 2.7 million children have been deprived of one of their parents since 1992. This form of legal cover has made the Japanese border the world’s number one destination for child abductors.

The only explanation I can think of for this outrageous hypocrisy is that the Human Rights Council is dancing to the tune of its funders  while the U.S. exercises its Security Council privilege on behalf of its allies.

Is this a Human Rights Commission of Inquiry, or a tool and an institutional arm of powerful states to bully small  non-powerful ones in order to serve their geo-political agendas and re-secure the power elites they prefer to serve within the country?

Is the U.N. Human Rights Council hoping to help convey to the Japanese public that it supports an Asian arms race and contribute to the  militarization of Japanese politics?

The Government of Japan has created a ministerial post whose sole purpose is to continually stir up sentiment and gain support on the basis of the North Korean abductions to contribute to steering the tone of Japanese national politics towards greater power and influence for the use of  the Japanese military, towards inserting Japan into a greater international military/security role, shored up by bloc politics and a resumption of the Cold War roots of the Liberal Democratic Party, favored by Japanese conservative, nationalist elites and the U.S. foreign policy and military establishments.

One can easily imagine the arm twisting and yanking the reins of funding that lies behind this hijacking of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations. It has become a standard mode of operation  for the Government of Japan.

To the Human Rights Council itself, we must ask: does this convey to the Japanese public that the concern for the human rights of children is an international concern, for which the UN Human Rights Council is willing to stand?
What about the current cases of international child abduction in Japan today?

And what about millions of Japanese children, nearly 3 million now, who are permanently separated from their parent, who has NO right to see, much less raise, his or her own children?
Is this not a concern for the most powerful and internationally respected human rights organization?

Stop Japanese International Child Abduction, Now!