Discrimination

Japanese immigration policy: A nation’s bouncers

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A suspicious death in police custody

Abubakar Awudu Suraj was already unconscious when the cabin crew of EgyptAir MS965 saw him on board, before the Tokyo-to-Cairo flight. Shortly later he was dead. A Ghanaian who had lived illegally in Japan, Mr Suraj was being deported on March 22nd, when he was lifted and forced onto the plane in handcuffs with a towel gagging him and knotted in the back to restrain him. An autopsy failed to determine a cause of death, yet his widow saw facial injuries when she identified the body. Three days later an Immigration Bureau official admitted: “It is a sorry thing that we have done.”

The death is putting Japan’s controversial immigration policy under a sharper spotlight. The country has long eschewed immigration. In recent months, however, its resistance has become even tougher. Families have been broken apart as parents of children born in Japan have been detained and deported. People who seemed to qualify for a special residency permit (SRP), designed for those who overstay their visa but wish to remain, have been denied. Forced deportations have become more frequent and rougher, according to the Asian People’s Friendship Society, a Japanese immigrant-support group. Japan’s Immigration Control Centres, where many illegal residents are detained, have faced special criticism. This year alone, two detainees have committed suicide, one has publicly complained of abuse, and 70 inmates staged a hunger strike demanding better treatment.

Around 2m foreigners live legally in Japan, which has a population of 128m; the justice ministry counted 91,778 illegal residents as of January. But the number, boosted by cheap Chinese labourers, may well be much higher. After a nine-day research trip last month, Jorge Bustamante, the UN’s special rapporteur on migrants’ rights, complained that legal and illegal migrants in Japan face “racism and discrimination, exploitation [and] a tendency by the judiciary and police to ignore their rights”.

The SRP system is an example of the problem. No criteria for eligibility are specified. Instead, published “guidelines” are applied arbitrarily. And people cannot apply directly for an SRP: illegal residents can only request it once in detention, or turn themselves in and try their luck while deportation proceedings are under way. So most illegal residents just stay mum. Mr Suraj fell into the SRP abyss after he was arrested for overstaying his visa. Although he had lived in Japan for 22 years, was fluent in the language and married to a Japanese citizen, his SRP request was denied.

Why the tougher policy now? Koichi Kodama, an immigration lawyer assisting Mr Suraj’s widow, believes it is a reaction to the appointment last year as justice minister of Keiko Chiba, a pro-immigration reformer; the old guard is clamping down. The police are investigating the incident and the ten immigration officers in whose custody Mr Suraj died, though no charges have been brought. As for Mr Suraj’s widow, she has yet to receive details about her husband’s death or an official apology. The topic is one Japanese society would rather avoid. The press barely reported it. Still, when her name appeared online, she was fired from her job lest the incident sully her firm’s name.

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16113280

Hunger strike at immigration center

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About 60 detainees at the East Japan Immigration Control Center in Ushiku, Ibaraki Prefecture, have been on hunger strike since Monday to seek better treatment, a Tokyo-based volunteer group member said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, center spokesman Hiroki Shimizu confirmed to The Japan Times that about 30 detainees, rather than 60, have refused to eat since Monday.

“The living conditions at immigration detention centers are really bad. We have been asking for improvement, but nothing has happened,” Mitsuru Miyasako of Bond, a group supporting foreign workers in Japan, told The Japan Times.

According to a press statement from Bond, the detainees are demanding the detention period be shortened to at most six months, bail for temporary release be no more than ¥200,000 and those younger than 18 not be confined.

Currently, bail ranges from ¥500,000 to ¥800,000 even for refugees, the group said.

Those participating in the hunger strike are from Sri Lanka, China, Uganda, Pakistan and Brazil, according to Miyasako. Kurds from Turkey are also refusing to eat, he said.

Many of the approximately 380 detainees in the center have valid reasons for not returning to their home countries, since some face persecution at home and others have family members in Japan, Miyasako claimed.

Among many complaints, medical services are insufficient in the center, he added.

“The center has just one doctor on the premises. Persuading immigration officers to let detainees go to a hospital for symptoms the doctor is unable to treat is really hard. If they allow it, detainees are cuffed and escorted by immigration officers,” Miyasako said.

About 200 in the Ushiku center have been detained there for at least six months in awful living conditions, Bond said.

Two detainees committed suicide this year, the group said in the statement, a fact the center’s Shimizu confirmed.

Meanwhile, Shimizu said the center is “constantly trying its best to accommodate detainees’ requests” and he does not consider their treatment to be lacking. The center has one doctor who works four days a week and who sometimes comes to the center in an emergency, he said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100513a1.html

Foreigner suffrage opponents rally

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Conservative politicians express outrage at DPJ plan

Conservative intellectuals and key executives from five political parties were among the thousands who gathered in Tokyo on Saturday to rally against granting foreign residents voting rights for local elections.

On hand were financial services minister Shizuka Kamei, who heads Kokumin Shinto (People’s New Party), Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Tadamori Oshima, former trade minister Takeo Hiranuma, who recently launched his own political party, Tachiagare Nippon (Sunrise Party of Japan), and Your Party leader Yoshimi Watanabe.

Jin Matsubara, a Lower House member from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, also attended.

According to the organizer, a total of 10,257 people attended the convention at the Nippon Budokan arena in Chiyoda Ward, including representatives of prefectural assemblies and citizens from across the nation.

Oshima, the LDP’s No. 2, promised that “in the name of protecting the nation’s sovereignty” the largest opposition party would do everything in its power to prevent such a bill from being enacted.

Your Party chief Watanabe accused the DPJ of using the suffrage issue to lure New Komeito, which supports foreigners’ local election rights, before the upcoming Upper House election. “This is nothing but an election ploy by the DPJ,” he claimed.

In an opening speech preceded by the singing of the “Kimigayo” national anthem, Atsuyuki Sassa, former head of the Cabinet Security Affairs Office and chief organizer of the event, expressed his concern about granting foreigners suffrage.

“I was infuriated when I heard of plans to submit to the Diet a government-sponsored bill giving foreign residents voting rights,” he said.

“Our Constitution grants those with Japanese nationality voting rights in return for their obligation to pay taxes,” he said. “Granting suffrage to those without Japanese nationality is clearly a mistake in national policy.”

Sassa also pointed out that 35 prefectures have adopted statements against granting foreigners suffrage, up from less than half that number in January.

“Our local governments clearly do not desire granting suffrage to foreigners,” he said.

DPJ heavyweights Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa are advocates of giving foreigners the right to vote at the local level, and the party has been preparing to craft the legislation it has been calling for since the party’s launch in 1998.

But the government scrapped a plan to submit the bill during the current Diet session after encountering fierce opposition from the financial services minister.

Taking the podium to a round of applause, Kamei emphasized his party’s role in preventing the government from submitting the bill to the Diet, and said that “it was obvious that granting suffrage will destroy Japan.”

Kamei, who has in the past argued that giving foreigners voting rights could incite nationalism during polling, went so far as to declare that his party would leave the ruling coalition if the government submitted the bill to the Diet.

Foreign nationals cannot vote in national or local elections, and changing the law has long been a controversial issue, particularly under the administrations of the LDP, whose conservative ranks have argued against granting suffrage, insisting that permanent foreign residents must first become naturalized citizens.

As of the end of 2008, 912,400 foreign nationals were registered with the government as permanent residents. Among them, 420,300 were special permanent residents, including Koreans and Taiwanese who lived in Japan before and during the war and were forced to take Japanese nationality, and their descendants. The remainder are general permanent residents.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100418a1.html

Ultranationalist ‘citizens groups’ on the march

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“Get out of Japan!”

“Cockroach.”

“Kimchi.”

Those were just some of the insults hurled at a demonstration on Feb. 21 in Tokyo’s Minato Ward.

More than 100 protesters belonging to several groups describing themselves as “active conservatives” gathered in front of a building that houses both the consular affairs department of the South Korean Embassy and the offices of the Korean Residents Union in Japan (Mindan).

Other flags and signs carried angry messages, such as “Expel foreigners,” and slogans equating Korean nationals living in Japan to criminals. Some of the words used could not be printed in a newspaper.

The protesters’ anger seemed to be targeted at a wide range of institutions including the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, China and North Korea. Reporters covering the demonstration were also yelled at.

The group eventually moved on to the Australian Embassy, where they yelled, “We will start a war with white people who insult Japan (over the whaling issue).”

At the same time as the Minato Ward protest, demonstrations were held in Nagoya and Fukuoka protesting plans to give foreign permanent residents the right to vote in local elections.

The Kyoto bar association issued a statement criticizing the group’s actions as “going beyond criticism of the use of the park to being a hate campaign to encourage discrimination.” On March 24, the Kyoto District Court issued a temporary order banning further demonstrations.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201004130433.html

For Japan to thrive, the wall must come down

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More than 20 years have passed since the Berlin Wall fell, yet Japan remains shut out from the rest of humanity by its own wall. Though it is a shapeless partition that we cannot touch, it nevertheless cuts off the country from the world beyond its shores. What are the characteristics of this invisible barrier?

It serves as much to prevent inbound flows as outward ones. Japan is the only major developed nation where almost none of the men and women of influence — in the realm of ideas, business or government — are from foreign backgrounds. Tokyo, as opposed to other global metropolises, has no cosmopolitan flavor. There is a striking paucity of Japanese people teaching in foreign universities, writing about the humanities and social sciences or contemporary politics in scholarly journals or mass-circulation magazines and Web sites, and working in multinational corporations, international organizations and nongovernmental organizations.

This intangible forcefield harms Japan much more than is generally realized. It condemns Japanese universities, especially in the humanities and social sciences, to international irrelevance. This is not to say that Japan lacks great researchers — it has plenty of them. But they operate in an environment with few foreign colleagues and students (except for a few Asian countries), are under-represented in international conferences, and rarely publish in global journals. Thus, their ideas remain locked within the boundaries of the wall.

This sad state of affairs deprives the country of international influence. As so few Japanese thinkers are heard abroad, the intellectuals, business and government leaders, activists and others who set the worldwide agenda in areas as diverse as economic priorities and fisheries managements are very rarely Japanese. Japan has an enormous stake in climate-change policy, but not one Japanese is playing a key role in shaping the global debate on the issue.

Isolation hurts Japan’s economy, especially in services. Unlike their industrial counterparts, service companies such as hotels, transportation, Web-centric businesses, entertainment and software businesses require a global mind-set and cultural awareness to be successful overseas. If so few Japanese conglomerates have managed to establish themselves in the premier league outside of manufacturing, it is partly due to their mono-cultural and exclusively Japanese management. It puts them at a severe disadvantage when competing with foreign rivals run by multinational and multicultural staffs.

The wall is partly to blame for the country’s greatest handicap. In the past decade, feminization has made great strides worldwide. The situation is far from perfect, but many societies are now making much better use of the talents of the half of the population that happens to be female. One reason Japan is so far behind is that it is cut off from these global trends.

How can Japan, in former U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s famous words, tear down this wall? One way is to encourage Japanese to make a name for themselves overseas. Universities could give preference to professors who have both studied and taught for several years overseas and publish in foreign journals. Government agencies could make service abroad in international organizations such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organization a major asset when considering hirings and promotions.

In the private sector, hopefully more businesses will realize that success, especially but not only in service industries, calls upon a global mind-set. This will entail hiring more foreigners in management positions and internationalizing Japanese staff. Anybody familiar with the Japanese hospitality industry — hotels, airlines, airports — knows how much more competitive it would be if it were more international and less parochial.

Japan has made a remarkable effort to welcome foreign students. But for Japan to attract dynamic and ambitious young men and women, they must be convinced that, though they are not Japanese, they will be able to join the business and academic elite of the country.

Knocking down the wall will be hard. As was the case with Berlin’s barbed wire, it protects the establishment. Japan’s best and brightest will benefit from cultural globalization, but many men who have been sheltered by the barriers that surround Japan (and from competing with women) will find the process traumatizing. But if the nation is to thrive in the 21st century, the wall must go.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/eo20100414a2.html

Japan’s rank down in intl sex gap report

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Japan’s ranking in a World Economic Forum report on the equality of the sexes was recently revised down 26 places to 101st among 134 nations, reflecting objections raised by a Japanese women’s organization and others about the initial assessment made in October.

The reassessment by the Geneva-based forum in its annual Gender Gap Report left Japan at the lowest level among developed countries, with the gap especially pronounced in economic and political fields.

Japan had been ranked 80th among 115 countries in 2006, 91st among 128 nations in 2007 and 98th among 130 countries in 2008.

The World Economic Forum has ranked different countries in its Global Gender Gap Index since 2006.

Japan’s overall ranking in the index published at the end of October shot up to 75th.

The change was especially startling in the professional and technical workers section of the economic participation and opportunity category, where Japan’s ratio of women was ranked first, up from 69th the previous year. In the section concerning legislators, senior officials and managers, the ranking catapulted from 101st in 2008 to 6th.

However, the rankings raised some eyebrows in Japan. The Working Women’s Network, a civic group, suggested the rankings did not reflect reality and sent a written inquiry to the WEF, quoting statistics compiled by the United Nations and the Japanese government.

Believing the WEF’s citation data must have been wrong, Kanazawa University Associate Prof.

Yayoi Sugihashi, an expert on economic statistics, recalculated the figures using the database of the International Labor Organization and informed the WEF of mistakes in the index.

On March 24, Sugihashi received a reply from the WEF that said the index had been revised as Sugihashi had indicated and Japan’s ranking corrected down to 101st on its Web site.

“I think the WEF had little choice but to make the correction,” Sugihashi said. “The ranking is very influential–it’s sometimes cited in government white papers.”

http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Asia/Story/A1Story20100407-208934.html

Japan, U.N. share blind spot on ‘migrants’

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I wish to speak about the treatment of those of “foreign” origin and appearance in Japan, such as white and non-Asian people. Simply put, we are not officially registered — or even counted sometimes — as genuine residents. We are not treated as taxpayers, not protected as consumers, not seen as ethnicities even in the national census. According to government polls and surveys, we do not even deserve the same human rights as Japanese. The view of “foreigner” as “only temporary in Japan” is a blind spot even the United Nations seems to share, but I will get to that later.

First, an overview: The number of non-Japanese (NJ) on visas of three months or longer has increased since 1990 from about 1 million to over two. Permanent residents (PR) number over 1 million, meaning about half of all registered NJ can stay here forever. Given how hard PR is to get — about five years if married to a Japanese, 10 years if not — a million NJ permanent residents are clearly not a temporary part of Japanese society.

Moreover, this does not count the estimated half-million or so naturalized Japanese citizens (I am one of them). Nor does this count children of international marriages, about 40,000 annually. Mathematically, if each couple has two children, eventually that will mean 80,000 more ethnically diverse Japanese children; over a decade, 800,000 — almost a million again. Not all of these children of diverse backgrounds will “look Japanese.”

What’s more, we don’t know Japan’s true diversity because the Census Bureau only surveys for nationality. This means when I fill out the census, I write down “Japanese” for my nationality, but I cannot indicate my ethnicity as a “white Japanese,” or a “Japanese of American extraction” (amerikakei nihonjin). I believe this is by design — because the politics of identity in Japan are all about “monoculturality and monoethnicity.” Given modern Japan’s emerging immigration and assimilation, this is a fiction. The official conflation of Japanese nationality and ethnicity is incorrect, yet our government refuses to collect data that would correct that.

The point is we cannot tell who is “Japanese” just by looking at them. This means that whenever distinctions are made between “foreigner” and “Japanese,” be it police racial profiling or “Japanese only” signs, some Japanese citizens will also be affected. Thus we need a law against racial discrimination in Japan — not only because it will help noncitizens assimilate into Japan, but also because it will protect Japanese against xenophobia, bigotry and exclusionism, against the discrimination that is “deep and profound” and “practiced undisturbed in Japan,” according to U.N. Rapporteur Doudou Diene in 2005 and 2006.

There are some differences in viewpoint between my esteemed colleagues here today and the people I am trying to speak for. Japan’s minorities as definable under the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), including Ainu, Ryukyuans, zainichi special-permanent- resident ethnic Koreans and Chinese, and burakumin, will speak to you as people who have been here for a long time — much longer than people like me, of course. Their claims are based upon time-honored and genuine grievances that have never been properly redressed. For ease of understanding, I will call them the “oldcomers.”

I will try to speak on behalf of the “newcomers,” i.e., people who came here relatively recently to make a life in Japan. Of course both oldcomers and newcomers contribute to Japanese society, in terms of taxes, service and culture, for example. But it is we newcomers who really need a Japanese law against racial discrimination, because we, the people who are seen because of our skin color as “foreigners,” are often singled out for our own variant of discriminatory treatment. Examples in brief:

1. Housing, accommodation
One barrier many newcomers face is finding an apartment. According to the Mainichi Shimbun (Jan. 8), on average in Tokyo it takes 15 visits to realtors for an NJ to find an apartment. Common experience — this is all we have because there is no government study of the problem — dictates that agents generally phrase the issue to landlords as, “The renter is a foreigner, is that OK?” This overt discrimination happens with impunity in Japan. One Osaka realtor even advertises apartments as “gaijin allowed,” a sales point at odds with the status quo. People who face discriminatory landlords can only take them to court. This means years, money for lawyers and court fees, and an uncertain outcome — when all you need is a place to live, now.

Another barrier is hotels. Lodgings are expressly forbidden by Hotel Management Law Article 5 to refuse customers unless rooms are full, there is a clear threat of contagious disease, or an issue of “public morals.” However, government surveys indicate that 27 percent of all Japanese hotels do not want foreign guests, period. Not to be outdone, Fukushima Prefecture Tourist Information advertised the fact that 318 of their member hotels refuse NJ. Thus even when a law technically forbids exclusionism, the government will not enforce it. On the contrary, official bodies will even promote excluders.

2. Racial profiling by police
Another rude awakening happens when NJ walk down the street. All NJ (but not citizens) must carry ID cards at all times or face possible criminal charges and incarceration. So Japanese police will target and stop people who “look foreign” in public, sometimes forcefully and rudely, and demand personal identification. This very alienating process of “carding” can happen when walking while white, cycling while foreign-looking, using public transportation while multiethnic, or waiting for arrivals at airports while colored. One person has apparently been “carded,” sometimes through physical force, more than 50 times in one year, and 125 times over 10 years.

Police justify this as a hunt for foreign criminals and visa over-stayers, or cite special security measures or campaigns. However, these “campaigns” are products of government policies depicting NJ as “terrorists, criminals and carriers of infectious diseases.” None of these things, of course, is contingent upon nationality. Moreover, since 2007, all noncitizens are fingerprinted every time they re-enter Japan. This includes newcomer PRs, going further than the US-VISIT program, which does not refingerprint Green Card holders. However, the worst example of bad social science is the National Research Institute of Police Science, which spends taxpayer money on researching “foreign DNA” for racial profiling at crime scenes.

In sum, Japan’s police see NJ as “foreign agents” in both senses of the word. They are systematically taking measures to deal with NJ as a social problem, not as fellow residents or immigrants.

3. Exclusion as ‘residents’
Japan’s registration system, meaning the current koseki family registry and juminhyo residency certificate systems, refuse to list NJ as “spouse” or “family member” because they are not citizens. Officially, NJ residing here are not registered as “residents” (jumin), even though they pay residency taxes (juminzei) like anyone else. Worse, some local governments (such as Tokyo’s Nerima Ward) do not even count NJ in their population tallies. This is the ultimate in invisibility, and it is government-sanctioned.
4. ‘Japanese only’ exclusion

With no law against racial discrimination, “No foreigners allowed” signs have appeared nationwide, at places such as stores, restaurants, hotels, public bathhouses, bars, discos, an eyeglass outlet, a ballet school, an Internet cafe, a billiards hall, a women’s boutique — even in publicity for a newspaper subscription service. Regardless, the government has said repeatedly to the U.N. that Japan does not need a racial discrimination law because of our effective judicial system. That is untrue.

For example, in the Otaru onsen case (1999-2005), where two NJ and one naturalized Japanese (myself) were excluded from a public bathhouse, judges refused to rule these exclusions were illegal due to racial discrimination. They called it “unrational discrimination.” Moreover, the judiciary refused to enforce relevant international treaty as law, or punish the negligent Otaru City government for ineffective measures against racial discrimination. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Furthermore, in 2006, an openly racist shopkeeper refused an African-American customer entry, yet the Osaka District Court ruled in favor of the owner! Japan needs a criminal law, with enforceable punishments, because the present judicial system will not fix this.

5. Unfettered hate speech
There is also the matter of the cyberbullying of minorities and prejudiced statements made by our politicians over the years. Other NGOs will talk more about the anti-Korean and anti-Chinese hate speech during the current debate about granting local suffrage rights to permanent residents.

I would instead like to briefly mention some media, such as the magazine “Underground Files of Crimes by Gaijin” (Gaijin Hanzai Ura Fairu (2007)) and “PR Suffrage will make Japan Disappear” (Gaikokujin Sanseiken de Nihon ga Nakunaru Hi (2010)). Both these books stretch their case to talk about an innate criminality or deviousness in the foreign element, and “Underground Files” even cites things that are not crimes, such as dating Japanese women. It also includes epithets like “nigger,” racist caricatures and ponderings on whether Korean pudenda smell like kimchi. This is hate speech. And it is not illegal in Japan. You could even find it on sale in convenience stores.
Conclusion

In light of all the above, the Japanese government’s stance towards the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is easily summarized: The Ainu, Ryukyuans and burakumin are citizens, therefore they don’t fall under the CERD because they are protected by the Japanese Constitution. However, the zainichis and newcomers are not citizens, therefore they don’t get protection from the CERD either. Thus, our government effectively argues, the CERD does not cover anyone in Japan.

Well, what about me? Or our children? Are there really no ethnic minorities with Japanese citizenship in Japan?

In conclusion, I would like to thank the U.N. for investigating our cases. On March 16, the CERD Committee issued some very welcome recommendations in its review. However, may I point out that the U.N. still made a glaring oversight.

During the committee’s questioning of Japan last Feb. 24 and 25, very little mention was made of the CERD’s “unenforcement” in Japan’s judiciary and criminal code. Furthermore, almost no mention was made of “Japanese only” signs, the most indefensible violations of the CERD.

Both Japan and the U.N. have a blind spot in how they perceive Japan’s minorities. Newcomers are never couched as residents of or immigrants to Japan, but rather as “foreign migrants.” The unconscious assumption seems to be that 1) foreign migrants have a temporary status in Japan, and 2) Japan has few ethnically diverse Japanese citizens.

Time for an update. Look at me. I am a Japanese. The government put me through a very rigorous and arbitrary test for naturalization, and I passed it. People like me are part of Japan’s future. When the U.N. makes their recommendations, please have them reflect how Japan must face up to its multicultural society. Please recognize us newcomers as a permanent part of the debate.

The Japanese government will not. It says little positive about us, and allows very nasty things to be said by our politicians, policymakers and police. It’s about time we all recognized the good that newcomers are doing for our home, Japan. Please help us.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20100406ad.html

‘Non-Japanese only’ Okinawa eatery turns tables

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Jon Mitchell explores why one restaurateur has effectively banned Japanese patrons

Okinawa Prefecture is home to three-quarters of America’s military bases in Japan. The vast majority of these, including Kadena Air Base, Torii Station and the contentious Marine Corps installation at Futenma, are located in the central part of the main island.

Despite overwhelming Okinawan opposition to the presence of the United States military, open animosity towards American servicemen is remarkably rare here. One of the few places where it is experienced, though, is in central Okinawa’s entertainment districts. Japanese-owned clubs and bars regularly turn away American customers, and some of them display English signs stating “members only” and “private club” in order to exclude unwanted foreign patrons. With Japan’s laws on racial discrimination tending towards the ambiguous, transforming a business into a private club has become a common way to circumvent any potential complaints to the Bureau of Human Rights.

Under these circumstances, the notices on the door of Sushi Zen, a small restaurant located at the edge of Chatan Town’s fishing port, are not unusual: “This store has a members-only policy. Entry is restricted to members.” However, what is different is the fact that they’re written in Japanese, and designed to keep away Japanese customers. Furthermore, Sushi Zen’s owner is not a xenophobic foreign expatriate, but a soft-spoken Japanese man named Yukio Okuhama…

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20100406zg.html

Korean worker who sued Tokyo govt retires

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Public health nurse Chong Hyang Gyun was all smiles when she retired from the Tokyo metropolitan government recently, even though it had refused to let her seek promotion because of her South Korean nationality.

A second-generation Korean resident of this country, Chong sued the metropolitan government in 1994, demanding she be allowed to take a promotion exam for a managerial post. The trial went on for 10 years of Chong’s 22-year career with the metropolitan government.

Ultimately, Chong was not able to be promoted because the Supreme Court overturned her victory in a lower court. Upon her retirement, however, she smiled and said, “I have no regrets.”

Chong officially retired Wednesday, as she had reached her mandatory retirement age of 60.

Chong was born in Iwate Prefecture. In 1988, she was hired as the first non-Japanese public health nurse to work for the metropolitan government.

Her application to take the internal exam to become a manager was refused, however, because of the metropolitan government’s “nationality clause,” which prohibits the appointment of non-Japanese employees to managerial posts.

The Tokyo District Court decided against her in 1996, ruling that the metropolitan government’s action was constitutional.

In 1997, the Tokyo High Court ruled that the metropolitan government’s decision violated the Constitution, which guarantees the freedom to choose one’s occupation, and ordered the Tokyo government to pay compensation to Chong.

The metropolitan government appealed this decision and in 2005, the Supreme Court nullified the high court ruling and rejected Chong’s demand.

After Chong openly expressed her disappointment at a press conference about the Supreme Court ruling, she received critical e-mails and other messages. Chong also said she sometimes felt it was hard to stay in her workplace.

However, a sizable number of her colleagues and area residents understood her feelings.

“I was supported by many people. I enjoyed my job,” Chong said.

For two years from 2006, Chong worked on Miyakejima island, helping residents deal with difficulties resulting from their prolonged evacuation.

Just before her retirement, Chong visited health care centers in Tokyo and other related facilities as chief of a section for preventing infectious diseases and caring for mentally handicapped people.

She was rehired from April as a nonregular employee at her workplace’s request, but she will work fewer days.

“I’ve been tense ever since filing the lawsuit, trying not to make any mistakes in other areas. Now I can finally relax,” Chong said.

Chong recently has been interested in supporting Indonesian nurse candidates in Japan. During the New Year holidays, she held a gathering to introduce them to Japanese culture.

“Now that a greater number of foreigners are in Japan, society as a whole should think about how to assimilate them,” Chong said.

She said she believed her lawsuit has helped raise those kind of questions.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20100403TDY03T02.htm

Migrants in Japan facing discrimination

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Migrants in Japan face discrimination, exploitation and other forms of mistreatment, an independent United Nations human rights expert said, urging the Japanese Government to strengthen their protection.

“They [migrants] still face a range of challenges, including racism and discrimination, exploitation, a tendency by the judiciary and police to ignore their rights, and the overall lack of a comprehensive immigration policy that incorporates human rights protection,” said Jorge A. Bustamante, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, at the end of a nine-day visit to Japan on Wednesday.

Bustamante praised some of the measures taken by the Government to alleviate the impact of the economic crisis on migrants and their children.

However, he stressed that “Japan has yet to adopt a comprehensive immigration policy that provides for the protection of migrants’ rights,” 20 years after it started receiving migrant workers.

“Japan should establish institutionalized programmes designed to create the necessary conditions for the integration of migrants into Japanese society and the respect of their rights, including to work, health, housing and education, without discrimination,” Bustamante said.

“Racism and discrimination based on nationality are still too common in Japan, including in the workplace, in schools, in healthcare establishments and housing,” he added.

Existing general provisions are not effective in protecting foreign residents from discrimination based on race and nationality, he said.

Bustamante expressed concern about the policy of detaining irregular migrants, including asylum-seekers, parents and children, for prolonged periods, in some cases for as long as three years, saying that practice amounted to a “de facto indefinite detention.”

“Clear criteria should be established in order to limit detention to the cases where it is strictly necessary, avoiding detaining persons such as those who are ill or who are the parents of minor children,” the human rights expert said.

“A maximum period of detention pending deportation should be set, after which foreigners should be released.”

The Special Rapporteur also drew attention to the high incidence of domestic violence against migrant women and their children.

“Appropriate policies to protect and assist single mothers and their children who find themselves in this extremely vulnerable situation are lacking and should be adopted and implemented urgently,” he said.

Noting that a considerable number of migrant children in Japan do not attend school, Bustamante said that “governmental efforts should be increased to facilitate that foreign children study either in Japanese or foreign schools, and learn Japanese.”

During his mission, the independent expert heard many cases where parents of children born in Japan or who have lived there for up to 15 years have been recently deported or detained, resulting in the children being separated from their parents because of their irregular residence status. “In accordance with the principle of the best interest of the child, families should not be separated,” he said.

The Special Rapporteur will later this year present to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council a complete report on his visit, with his observations and recommendations.

An expert from Mexico on international migration, Bustamante was appointed as Special Rapporteur by the former Commission on Human Rights in 2005.

http://www.newkerala.com/news/fullnews-82068.html