|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
T he Japanese are polite and friendly to visitors to their country, but their government is known to be less than welcoming to foreigners who want to stay permanently. Yet in the past few years, that hasn’t seemed to bother those who have been flocking to Japan to seek asylum.
Official Japanese data show that last year, asylum applications shot up to almost 14,000, from just 3,772 in 2022. Sri Lankans topped the list of asylum seekers in 2023, followed by Turks, and then Pakistanis.
In what seems to be a reflection of Japan’s continued reluctance to open up fully to outsiders, however, the number of those accepted for asylum remained quite low, at 303 for 2023. Still, the figure was a significant leap from 2022’s 202, based on statistics from the Ministry of Justice.
Retired professor and Tibetan native Perma Gyalpo explains why foreigners – or at least those from other Asian countries – have been applying for asylum in Japan: “Japan’s close proximity to Asia has made it an important destination for people who value their freedom.”
But he also points out that the world’s fourth largest economy is an active postwar democracy, as well as a member of the Group of Seven (G7), comprising rich, industrialized countries.
In addition, Japan – which used to be content with being seen primarily as an economic superpower in the international arena – has started speaking up against human rights violations in other countries, including those nearby.
Japan this year became a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council. Rights advocates and political observers, however, say that Japan’s decision to be more vocal about human rights is being driven more by the urgency to contain China’s ever-growing influence, which has been causing multilateral and bilateral tensions.
Hitotsubashi University international politics professor Makiko Ichihara notes that Tokyo is taking the same stance as Washington. She says, “Japan plays a large role in the current international platform, which has the United States that has made containing China a prime concern at the forefront.”
Not walking the walk
Interestingly, China was among the top five countries of origin of those accepted for asylum in Japan in 2022 and 2023.
Aside from Tibetans like Gyalpo, Chinese nationals who want to call Japan home include Uyghurs from Xinjiang and ethnic Mongols from Inner Mongolia, as well as political dissidents and those from oppressed religions.
Sawut Muhammad, an Uyghur who was born in Urumqi in what he refers to as East Turkestan instead of Xinjiang, arrived in Japan as a student in 2007. Last year, he became a Japanese citizen. “I wanted freedom,” he says, explaining why he chose to change citizenship. “I also wanted a Japanese passport to be able to travel freely.”
Yet while Japan has begun speaking out on issues it had been silent about before, rights advocates say its words have yet to be matched by action.
For instance, says Gyalpo, who taught international relations at Takushoku University in Tokyo, Japan is the only member of the Group of Seven nations without a legal framework to impose sanctions against high-ranking officials and organizations in other countries on the ground of human rights abuses.
More close to home, rights advocates say that Japanese authorities remain clueless, if not indifferent, on how to protect asylum seekers and refugees from transnational repression, particularly that from Beijing.
Sawut is one of many who have highlighted the lack of help from Japanese authorities even after they reported receiving threatening phone calls and surveillance of their demonstrations by who they believe are Chinese secret police.
Now 46 years old, Sawut is the vice head of the Tokyo-based Japan Uyghur Association, which represents the 2,000-strong displaced Uyghur community in the country. The organization is the official lobby platform calling on Japan to advocate for freedom for the Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority with Turkish roots in China.
Sawut`s organization liaises with the World Uyghur Congress, an umbrella established by Uyghurs living in foreign countries. Their work aims to strengthen international support to end crimes of humanity against Uyghurs in China: imprisonment, forced labor, surveillance, and banning the practice of their culture.
But it is work that has landed Sawut in Beijing’s crosshairs. “I told the (Japanese) police I need protection,” he tells Asia Democracy Chronicles (ADC). “But they reported that they cannot take action unless I file a violence complaint.”
He also worries about what could be happening to his mother, who is still in Xinjiang and whom he has not seen or spoken with for more than a decade. Says Sawut: “My dilemma is that I worry constantly about her safety, but I still have to keep working for the independence of my people.”
Missing support
It’s a situation familiar to Olhunud Daichin, who also arrived in Japan as a student more than 20 years ago and eventually decided to stay. A native of China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Olhunud leads a campaign in Japan to raise awareness of the political oppression and cultural assimilation policies of Beijing in his homeland.
Aside from feeling the same vulnerability as Sawut in Japan, Olhunud says that even after taking Japanese nationality, “I remain afraid to go home because of the real threat of being arrested by the Chinese government.” He adds that his parents back home have been threatened by Chinese authorities. “They received phone calls demanding they contact me and tell me to stop my activities in Japan,” says Olhunud.
Chinese politics professor Tomoko Ako of the University of Tokyo, Japan’s leading national university, says that she is extremely frustrated about the lack of support for herself and her Chinese students who face intimidation from Beijing. Almost half of Japan’s international students are Chinese nationals. Says Ako: “My Chinese students are not speaking up in class or participating in demonstrations because they are aware of the surveillance from Chinese spies in Japan. They are reporting fear of reprisal by Beijing.
“I have alerted the Japanese government and university management about the need to extend urgent protection to Chinese students.” Ako also says. “But there is very little support.” She adds that the authorities’ typical reaction is a “wait and see” attitude, which she says is “dangerous.”
Recently, though, Japanese authorities raided one of what is believed to be one of at least two Chinese overseas police stations in the country. A report by Japan Times on the incident, however, said that the raid had been prompted by an “alleged illegal receipt of COVID-19 subsidies for businesses.” The other supposed secret Chinese police station in Japan was the subject of a search by local authorities in May 2023, the report said.
In the meantime, some Japanese who cannot wait for authorities to act are taking the initiative to help support foreign colleagues who find themselves in trouble with their home countries.
Hokkaido Education University Professor Izumi Takeda says that he is working with a small group in a campaign to free Dr. Yuan Keqin, who was arrested in China in May 2019, when he visited his homeland.
Keqin had been Takeda’s colleague at the university for two decades; he remains in detention in Changchun, in northeastern China, on espionage charges. Takeda says that his university has not made any move to be part of the campaign for Keqin’s release.
Vocal abroad, silent at home
The more cynical among rights advocates say that all these show the continuing disconnect between Tokyo’s desire to be seen as a human rights defender in the international arena and its attitude toward refugees and asylum seekers in Japan.
The U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says that Japan is host to “25,800 persons of concern to UNHCR, including nearly 1,400 refugees and humanitarian status holders.”
“Japan is a state party to the 1951 Refugee Convention,” UNHCR says. “In 2021, the country was the fourth largest government donor (US$140 million), and the third largest global private-sector contributor (US$61 million) to UNHCR responding to needs worldwide.”
The global rights monitor Human Rights Watch (HRW) meanwhile observes, “Japan’s asylum and refugee determination system remains strongly oriented against granting refugee status.” It says that many of the 202 asylum seekers got Tokyo’s nod in 2022 only because they were “Afghan staff of the Japanese embassy in Kabul and their family members.”
HRW also notes that in June 2023, the Japanese Diet “passed a bill to amend the Immigration and Refugee Recognition Act.” It adds: “The new law allows Japan to deport asylum seekers who apply for refugee status more than twice.”
Seki Sosuke, a lawyer who has represented refugee applicants, says that Japan in the past was not even keen to recognize refugee applications from Chinese nationals. He says that this was due to concerns that doing so could affect the relations between Tokyo and Beijing.
“Perhaps reflecting the cooling of Japan-China relations, it began recognizing them around 2020,” says Sosuke. “In reality, the only criterion that should be used to make the decision is the risk of persecution, so this shows the distortion of Japan’s refugee recognition system.” ◉
Suvendrini Kakuchi is a Sri Lankan journalist based in Japan, with a career that spans three decades. She focuses on development issues and Japan-Asia relations.
