A Japanese freelance photographer said today he was forced to give up his passport because he planned a reporting trip to Syria, which the government has stepped up warnings to its citizens not to visit after two Japanese were killed there in a recent hostage crisis.
Yuichi Sugimoto, a 58-year-old journalist who has covered the Middle East and other war-torn areas on and off for the past 20 years, complaining at a press conference that the confiscation violated his constitutional right of travel and press freedom and took away his work.
Sugimoto said he handed over his passport after police and Foreign Ministry officials visited his home over the weekend in Niigata, north-central Japan, to demand he surrender it. One official gave him an order signed by Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, he said, a photocopy of which he provided to The Associated Press.
News of his planned trip to Syria had been published in local media.
Japan is still in shock from a recent hostage crisis in which two Japanese were allegedly beheaded by militants from the Islamic State group. The government has raised its travel advisory for Syria to its highest level, urging citizens to withdraw from the countries, but the warnings are not legally binding.
Top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga has defended the confiscation of Sugimoto's passport, the first such case under the passport law, given the risk in Syria and the government's responsibility to protect its people.
Sugimoto said confiscating his passport was an abuse of government power and that he feared similar steps might be imposed on other journalists.
"Losing my passport means a loss of my work as a freelance photographer. I feel my entire life is being denied," he said, adding that he worried that the passport confiscation would set a "bad precedence" and interfere in the work of other journalists.
In Japan, where conformity takes precedence over individuality, and individuals are expected to act in line with national interests, Sugimoto's case created little public outcry.
The confiscation came days after Sugimoto twice rejected requests from officials to stop his planned trip. Sugimoto said he explained that he planned to only visit refugee camps near the Turkish border and had no plans to go further into militant-controlled areas.
