The Japanese government set up an expert panel Tuesday to formulate policy on the ethnic Ainu people.
At a press conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said that the expert panel is composed of eight members, including Hokkaido Governor Harumi Takahashi and Tadashi Kato, an ethnic Ainu and executive director of the Ainu Association of Hokkaido.
The panel is expected to convene its first meeting in early August and draw up a recommendation in about a year, said Machimura.
The move came after a resolution passed Japan's two-chamber Diet on June 6, recognizing the Ainu as an "indigenous people.
The resolution called on the government to recognize the ethnic Ainu as indigenous people with a unique language, religion and culture and urged the authorities to improve the social status of the Ainu as Japan's past assimilation policy rendered them underprivileged and discriminated against in the modernization process.
Source:Xinhua
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