No welcome mat in Japan
Refugees, by definition, are people fleeing persecution or danger in their home country to seek safety and a better life elsewhere. Nations which have signed the U.N. Convention on Refugees, including Japan, pledge to protect them. Yet those who arrive here as asylum seekers are routinely treated as illegal immigrants and incarcerated in detention centers. Legal advice is difficult to obtain, and those who manage to apply for refugee status are faced with an average wait of two years to get an answer.
Asylum seekers are not legally allowed to work during this period, yet the government provides financial support to only a limited number of candidates, and only for a period of four months. This support is hardly lavish, either, consisting of 135,000 yen in living expenses per month for a family of four, plus a monthly maximum of 60,000 yen in housing support. When the number of refugee applications last year doubled from 2007 to 1,599, the government temporarily suspended support altogether, claiming to be “overwhelmed” by the increase. Although the payments were reinstated after a few days, worse news arrived this May, when tightened eligibility criteria cut off support for more than 150 asylum seekers.
Eri Ishikawa of the Tokyo-based Japan Association for Refugees (JAR) admits that the situation is tough. “We’re swamped,” she sighs. “Forty people have become homeless, some of them women and children. While we and other charities are trying to secure accommodation as quickly as possible, we’re struggling to deal with the sudden increase in demand.”
In addition to legal and social advice, the JAR also provides financial support for those in need. After the government tightened its acceptance criteria, the group launched a fund-raising effort in order to continue supporting those who had been deprived of aid under the new restrictions. Thanks to both corporate and individual donations, JAR has managed to raise 3,609,000 yen, which they aim to start distributing this month.
Asylum seekers with valid passports or travel papers are not usually incarcerated as soon as they arrive in Japan, and they can enter the country on a tourist visa.
This is what Hso and Myint* did when they first came here in 1992, fleeing the military junta in their native Myanmar. When we meet them in their elegant Korean barbecue restaurant in Takadanobaba, it’s hard to believe that they have overcome a 17-year struggle to get there. Speaking no Japanese when they first arrived and without legal advice or financial support, they had no choice but to slip under the radar, avoiding the authorities after their tourist visas ran out. Having made connections with the local Myanmarese community, they managed to make do for ten years by working illegally. Finally, in 2003, they applied for refugee status on the advice of their families.
Yet no sooner had they applied than Hso was arrested while out riding his bicycle, when police noticed that his alien registration card and visa were out of date. He was held in detention for 64 days awaiting trial, during which time he shared a cell with two yakuza. “Ironically, they understood me better than the police,” he recalls. “They shouted at the officers, ‘Hey! Release this guy, he’s done nothing wrong!’ But when I tried to tell the police I was a refugee, they said it had nothing to do with them, that it was a matter for the Ministry of Justice.”
Hso was eventually released with a warning and five-year probation, but that wasn’t to be the end of it. After his case was passed over to the immigration authorities, he was immediately taken to a detention center in Shinagawa, where he would spend another 19 months.
“It was terrible,” he says. “There were six men to a six-mat room, and you had to ask for permission just to use a pen. I had severe back pain, but the doctor didn’t even look at me when he came. He just gave me weak painkillers, and it was a month before they finally took me to hospital — in handcuffs.” Eventually, Hso was given spinal injections to relieve his pain.
After applying for voluntary release seven times, Hso was finally let out to join Myint, who had been struggling to raise their three young children by herself. Receiving no help from the government, she had had to survive on money sent over by her family in Myanmar. In May 2005, after a tense two-and-a-half year wait, the couple was finally informed that they had not been granted refugee status, but were allowed to stay in the country as long-term residents on humanitarian grounds. “I wish the government had recognized us as refugees,” says Hso, “but I know that I am one inside, and that’s what counts.”