With the spread of the new coronavirus, the internet has been used to identify people infected with the virus as well as their families in an aim to post slanderous and discriminatory remarks against them. A man in his 40s living in the Tokai region became a target of what is dubbed as "online hunting of the infected." "I feared people more than the invisible virus," he said.
His child in his late teens, who usually lives in a city in a neighboring prefecture, developed a fever and was found to have been infected with the virus while staying at the man's home in April. The government of the prefecture where the man lives announced on the day a person developed a fever that the person, without revealing his or her name, was one of the infected people from outside the prefecture.
But before the announcement was made, rumors had already spread online that a person of a particular area in the prefecture might have been infected with the virus. Among messages posted on social media and the online message board designed for the Tokai region were "Someone brought the virus into the prefecture" and "Who is the stupid infected person?" Some posts apparently aim to identify the infected person and his family.
A message saying, "The person seems to have been admitted to hospital A," was posted online several hours after the prefectural announcement. The man and his child were identified online some time later. It was followed by a slew of online posts slandering the two and revealing a part of their name. They included, "Bio terrorist" and "Hope they disappear from the world."
At that time, the national government was calling for voluntary restraint on unnecessary and nonurgent travel across prefectures. The online posts escalated to the point of hostility, and false rumors began to flood the internet. They included, "The infected was seen at a supermarket" and "The infected went to a pachinko parlor everyday."
Although the child, after returning to his or her hometown, never left home before being hospitalized, the groundless information took on a life of its own.
The life of the family changed dramatically.
"Don't bring in the coronavirus. Get out!" It was a message left on their answering machine. Although other family members were not infected, they were indirectly asked not to come to a supermarket or hair salon they used to frequent. The family members became unable to go out. They had to ask their relatives to deliver them food and daily necessities.
"Do we have to be blamed that much?" the man said, speaking of his child having returned to the hometown. What's hard for him to accept is that someone, who apparently believed in the false rumor, wrote online that his child has bad conduct.
"I want to explain my child is not that kind of person," the man said. But he has not been able to do so. "If slanders and rumors spread on the internet again, my family members may be harmed," he said. "I have no choice but to keep quiet and wait for the time to pass."
-- Cross-prefectural travelers are likely targets
Many of the victims of "online hunting of the infected" are people found to have been infected with the virus -- and their families -- before or after they moved across prefectures while the national government was calling for voluntary restraint on nonurgent travel across prefectures.
In one instance, the name and address of a female student were revealed online in late March after she became the first person infected with the virus in Toyama Prefecture. She had returned to her hometown in the prefecture after attending an event at a university in Kyoto Prefecture that turned out to be the source of a coronavirus cluster.
In a case of another woman, who returned to Tokyo from her hometown in Yamanashi Prefecture on a highway bus after becoming infected, many messages, including "Your family deserves to be eliminated," were posted on social network sites in early May. An alleged photograph of her was also posted online.
The government of Iwate Prefecture, where the first case of COVID-19 was reported on July 29, implemented measures to check the internet and record images of problematic online posts to use them as evidence when filing defamation and other lawsuits.
The company where the infected man works was flooded with more than 100 phone calls or emails over a two-day period after the firm unveiled on its website the infection of the employee. The calls and emails included some trying to force it to fire the employee. The prefectural government saved images of about 10 postings after it found some slanderous postings, including one that he "deserves to be bashed."
According to the Justice Ministry, there were 1,985 online human rights violation cases in 2019, about three times the 658 cases reported in 2010. The figure is likely to become even larger this year due to the outbreak.
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