Japan’s refugee policy: No asylum, no rights in detention

Japan only recognizes one percent of all asylum applications. Those who have to leave the country again sometimes sit in custody for years – under extreme conditions. Even the death of a woman in prison did not trigger a rethink.

The numbers are negligible: not even one percent of all asylum seekers in Japan have received a residence permit in the past ten years. In 2020 there were just 47 people.

Those who are obliged to leave the country often spend a lot of time in the deportation prison. Like the African Luis. He came to Japan in 2002 and has been in custody for seven years since then. There, he says, he was denied basic rights. “I spit blood for about a year and a half. I could barely eat properly, but no one took me to the hospital.” His Japanese wife was also pressured to leave him and abort their child, he told the club of foreign journalists in Tokyo.

Aggravation suspended after death

It was not until the spring that Vishma, a young woman from Sri Lanka, died in such a facility. She is already the eighteenth dead. She is also said to have been denied medical help. She had lost almost 20 kilos and had written petitions over and over again.

Her mother said after Wishma’s death that her daughter loved Japan: “She was a child who was kind to everyone and offered help. It really breaks my heart to think that before she died she thought, ‘ Nobody helps me’.” After all, something changed after her death: A planned tightening of the law was suspended after violent protests – for the time being.

Even after discharge, no chance of integration

The US documentary filmmaker Ian Thomas Ash, who has lived in Japan for more than 20 years, was so shocked by what he experienced as a volunteer in the Ushiku deportation prison near Tokyo that he secretly filmed his conversations with the inmates. Interviews are forbidden there. During the conversations you are – that’s how it is ARD studio Tokyo experienced – separated by a pane of glass.

Nine men later gave their approval for Ash’s recording. The result was a moving film that was recently shown at the Nippon Festival in Frankfurt. Ash says that people are not only treated like criminals in custody – even if they are released for a short time, they would be denied any chance of integration: “They have no work permits, no health insurance. They are not allowed to leave their state. The provisional one Release is like a prison without walls. ”

Not a public issue

Above all, Ash wants to shake up the Japanese with his film and show them what is happening in their country. “There are very many people in the Japanese public who are completely unaware of this problem,” he says. “That’s why we must first create an awareness of what is happening and then stimulate them to think about questions like this: What do we as citizens want for our country? To what extent are we accomplices in our government?”

International organizations such as the United Nations Human Rights Committee have also called on Japan to improve conditions for refugees. So far, however, the government has been unimpressed.