Newsletter No. 764
News-Analysis
October 13, 2007

 

DOGAN FAMILY TELLS THEIR STORY TO THE CANADIAN PRESS

Another story related to Japan’s shameful treatment of Kurdish refugees has appeared. We talked about the Dogan family in Shingetsu Newsletter No. 670. Briefly, they are a Kurdish family that fought for asylum in Japan for eight years, gained many Japanese supporters, but were consistently denied by the “Justice Ministry.” Finally, Canada granted the asylum that Japan steadfastly refused.

At any rate, this article from the Toronto Globe and Mail should (but won’t) demonstrate that their backwards immigration policies do not serve the greater interests of the Japanese nation.

Full Disclosure: I just had a bad encounter with them myself over my visa status.

In Japan, Foreigners Aren't Welcome
By Geoffrey York
Toronto Globe and Mail
Friday, October 12, 2007

In the Turkish village of his birth, Deniz Dogan endured years of discrimination and harassment by police who jailed him twice for his political activities on behalf of the Alevi religious minority. So he decided to escape to a country that seemed peaceful and tolerant: Japan.

Seven years later, he says he has found less freedom in Japan than in the country he fled. For a time, he had to work illegally to put food on his table. Police stop him to check his documents almost every day. He has suffered deportation threats, interrogations and almost 20 months in detention. In despair, he even considered suicide.

His brother and his family, who fought even longer for the right to live in Japan, finally gave up and applied for refugee status in Canada, where they were quickly accepted. "We had an image of Japan as a very peaceful and democratic country," Dogan said. "It was very shocking to realize that we had less freedom in Japan than in Turkey. We did nothing wrong, except to try to get into this country, yet we were treated as criminals. We felt like insects."

Despite its wealth and democracy, Japan has one of the world's most intolerant regimes for refugees and immigrants. And despite its labor shortages and declining population, the government still shows little interest in allowing more foreigners in. From 1982 to 2004, Japan accepted only 313 refugees, less than 10 percent of those who applied. Even after its rules were slightly liberalized in 2004, it allowed only 46 refugees in the following year. Last year it accepted only 34 of the 954 applicants. Those numbers are tiny in comparison with Canada, which accepted more than 42,000 refugees last year, despite having a much smaller population than Japan. But they are also tiny in comparison to European countries such as France and Italy. On a per capita basis, Japan's rate of accepting refugees is 139th in the world, according to the United Nations.

Japan's attitude toward immigrants is equally unwelcoming. It has one of the industrialized world's lowest rates of accepting immigrants. Only about 1 percent of its population is foreign-born. Yet paradoxically, Japan is in greater need of immigrants than most other nations. Because of a sharp drop in its birth rate, its population is on the verge of a decline unprecedented for any nation in peacetime. Demographic decline has emerged as one of Japan's most hotly debated and angst-ridden issues. Yet the obvious solution -- allowing in a substantial number of immigrants -- is rarely considered. The tight restrictions on foreigners have remained in place. Robots, rather than immigrants, are seen as the potential solution to labor shortages. One government panel has recommended that foreigners should never comprise more than 3 percent of the population.

Much of Japan's hostility to immigrants and refugees is the result of prejudice against foreigners, who are widely blamed for most of the crime in the country. Ignorance is widespread. In one survey, more than 90 percent of Japanese said they don't have any regular contact with foreigners, and more than 40 percent said they rarely even see any. Politicians are reluctant to allow any challenge to Japan's racial homogeneity. Their beliefs are typified by a top leader of the ruling party, former foreign minister Taro Aso, who described Japan as "one culture, one race." The government has refused to pass laws against racial discrimination, making Japan one of the few industrialized countries where it is legal. "We do not often see Japanese people praising the work of foreign residents and warmly welcoming them as friends and colleagues," wrote Sakanaka Hidenori, former director of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau, who retired after 35 years in Japan's immigration system and now heads the Japan Immigration Policy Institute. "The native Japanese have lived as a single ethnic group for nearly 1,000 years and it will be a difficult task for them to build friendly relationships with other ethnic groups," he wrote in a recent book, "Immigration Battle Diary."

These attitudes have shaped a system of tight restrictions against foreigners who try to enter Japan. One of the latest laws, for example, requires all foreigners to be fingerprinted when they enter the country. Japan's rules on refugee claims are so demanding that it can take more than 10 years for a refugee to win a case, and even then the government sometimes refuses to obey the court rulings. Hundreds of applicants give up in frustration after years of fruitless effort.

Japan demands "an unusually high standard of proof" from asylum seekers, according to the most recent United Nations report. They are asked to give documentary evidence of their claims, including arrest warrants in their home country, which can be impossible to provide. They are often required to translate those documents into Japanese, which is costly and complicated. Then the documents are often rejected as invalid. "It has been a very legalistic approach, showing no humanitarian sense to those who had to flee," said Sadako Ogata, the former UN high commissioner for refugees, in a recent Japanese newspaper interview. "From the perspective of Japanese officials, the fewer that come the better."