英文レター
Dear committee members of The Committee on the Rights of the Child
Upon the call for comment for the draft guidelines on the implementation of the OPSC, I send the letter to you.
Please find the attached.
Sincerely,
Nana Shi
七師 (Nana Shi)
Japan
March 24, 2019
The Committee on the Rights of the Child
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Palais Wilson
52 rue des Pâquis
CH-1201 Geneva, Switzerland.
Dear Sirs/Madams,
Thank you for writing up a draft for the guidelines on the implementation of the OPSC. It is a huge step for saving children who suffer from sexual abuse. I’d like to put several comments so as to improve the guidelines to help children better and more effectively.
I share the philosophy the guidelines present in general, but I have some concerns on the details. I summarized them into the following five categories.
1. Unfairness in the process
2. Lack of abortion
3. Prejudice against subculture
4. Huge effect on the fiction
5. Police abuse of authority
I am going to explain those categories one by one and point out actual paragraphs and potential fixes below.
Unfairness in the process
First of all, even though this kind of guidelines affect a lot on people’s life all over the world, the draft is available only in English, French and Spanish, and comments are accepted only in those languages too. Considering those languages are only those of the western European countries, the process is significantly unfair to all the rest of the world, including my home country, Japan.
In Japan, almost all people, with only small exception for those who have some relationship with overseas, don’t understand the level of English as in the guidelines, and any French or Spanish at all. That means, Japanese people are almost completely excluded from the discussion, and that is causing significant frustration and, in some cases, hostile reactions from those who fear they may be affected by the guidelines but have nothing to do with vicious child abuse.
So, please change the policy to, at least, accept comments in other languages if they are the official/common languages of the States Parties.
Lack of abortion
In paragraph 106(a), it talks about ‘medical care,’ but to my surprise, it doesn’t mention ‘abortion’ and ‘abortion pills’ at all there. They are primary needs for the majority of victims and must be available within the reach of all children. I think this is one of the most important problems in the world to take immediate action internationally to save children.
It looks crystal clear to me that abortion and abortion pills are essential to save child abuse victims, and I am really surprised to know there are countries where abortion and abortion pills are illegal. And even if they are not illegal, they are often not available to many victims because of the high price and lack of consent of their guardians or the authority.
So, I claim, considering its importance, the guidelines should mention abortion and abortion pills explicitly with the top priority. I even think abortion is worth consisting of an independent paragraph on its own.
Prejudice against subculture
In paragraph 43, it says ‘continuous circulation of such (abuse) material ... contributes to the promotion of a subculture in which children are perceived as sexual objects, and ...’ However, no other paragraphs discuss ‘subculture’ at all, and so this part is a surprise to me.
What is subculture? Why subculture? Is subculture the only thing that can threat children? Why not Christianity, for example, as we have seen a lot of heartbreaking news recently? Or is Christianity a ‘subculture’ in your definition?
I know these above are emotional reactions, but nonetheless, they are possible reactions to the paragraph by those who like subcultures, because the paragraph sounds as if child abuse is allowed for main cultures, but not only for subcultures. I can’t understand such a clause with prejudice is included there.
So, I suggest to remove the entire clause, ‘contributes to the promotion of a subculture in which children are perceived as sexual objects,’ because the deletion does not change the meaning of the paragraph at all.
Huge effect on the fiction
In paragraph 62, it includes ‘realistic representations of non-existing children’ in child pornography which is needed to criminalize by laws. In paragraph 63, it interprets ‘simulated explicit sexual activities’ as including ‘virtual depiction of a child.’ Both expand the interpretation of a ‘child’ in the OPSC to a fictional child.
However, by reading the OPSC carefully, it is clear that it does not mention anything about fictional children at all. It mentions ‘a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities,’ but it is about simulated sexual activities, but not at all about simulated (virtual) children. Those two concepts are completely different and must never be confused.
One problem is, this change of the definition of the main concept of the OPSC, a ‘child,’ is so fundamental that it affects the entire OPSC and its implementations. As I understand, it shouldn’t be done by only making guidelines like this, but should go through a full process to amend the protocol.
Another problem is, this change affects creative activities in general seriously. In an extreme case, which doesn’t mean an unlikely case, it becomes impossible to depict any children unless they are all safe and happy. What a dystopia it is! Children in real life have complex problems including sexual threat, and fiction writers tend to pursue extreme situations to reveal humanity in depth by forcing characters to cope with them. But these guidelines simply consider such efforts as child porn and kill them.
Moreover, in paragraph 63, it says ‘such depictions contribute to normalising the sexualisation of children.’ This idea is so dangerous because it effectively says fictions normalize crimes, and in theory, the same logic can be applied to any kinds of crimes. Fiction writers will not be allowed to depict murders, drugs, thefts, corruption, violence, etc. Eventually you will not be able to read/watch anything but textbooks.
It is ridiculous. There are many fictions that depicts crimes all over the world, and yet crimes haven’t become normalized. Crimes and fictional depictions of crimes are totally different. We must not confuse fictional depictions of child abuse with products of child abuse.
So, I suggest to remove ‘non-existing children’ from paragraph 62, and 'virtual’ from paragraph 63.
Police abuse of authority
In paragraph 68, it recommends to criminalize a mere possession of child pornography only with limited and explicit exceptions. I understand the motivation, but I worry this gives too much power to police.
In the ideal world, police always have goodwill and arrest only criminals on their own priority and principles. But in reality, it is not always true, and may be far from the ideal. Police may arrest innocent people for their own interest or that of someone who has power over them. A mere possession is good for them because they don’t need to prove almost nothing, and they even plant evidence quite easily.
To make matters worse, police have only limited resources and if they get too busy, they need to abandon some of the crime investigations, and the selection will be arbitrarily. Then, such cases can happen that police ignore hurting, terrible child abuse done by authoritative people because they are too busy accusing a lot of ordinary people of a mere possession of publicly downloadable sexual child selfies, or even sexual illustration of non-existing children.
The intention to prevent continuous circulation of child pornography is good, but we should be careful of unexpected consequence of seemingly good implementation.
So, I suggest to recommend to criminalize a mere possession of child pornography only in explicitly specified cases.
Finally, I am deeply concerned on child sexual abuse and hoping the world to be a safe place for every child. And to do that, I strongly believe we should take meaningful steps towards real problems, and the steps need to be supported by every member of the society.
Yours sincerely,
七師
3/15 初稿
3/24 改訂
