Keeping foreigners out of Japan
By Julian Ryall in Tokyo
Monday 12 April 2004, 4:49 Makka Time, 1:49 GMT
Japanese society is very safe, traditional and homogenous
The man in front of me laughs and shakes his head when I ask for his name.
"You can call me Mr Tanaka," he says. Tanaka is one of the most common family names in Japan, but this man is clearly not Japanese. He is tall and and quite apparently non-Japanese.
His English is heavily accented, a cigarette is in one hand and the way he balances on the balls of his feet and constantly scans the crowds passing through Tokyo's busy nightlife district of Shibuya suggests that he is ready for anything.
And "Mr Tanaka" has good reason to be wary. He and his three friends are illegally selling phone cards that have been altered so they can be re-used.
As well as not having a proper job, they do not have the correct documents allowing them to live in Japan. As illegal immigrants, they are the target of a new crackdown by Japanese authorities that has been condemned by some as Draconian.
We talk - guardedly - for a couple of minutes, until a friend gives a low whistle.
Before I have a chance to determine where the danger has come from, all four men have disappeared; one into a computer game centre, two down a subway entrance and the last into a narrow alleyway behind the restaurants and bars.
Sure enough, seconds later, three policemen with batons patrol down the street.
Rights violated
"The immigrants that I speak to feel as if they are victims and that their rights are being violated," said Manami Yano, secretary general of Solidarity Network, an umbrella organisation for 90 human rights groups in Japan.
"Many are already scared to go out of their homes to go shopping or just to see friends as they are often stopped by the police and arrested.
"It's true that it has been hard for immigrants for many years, but it has already gotten worse in the last year," she said. "These people don't have a big voice and the government is simply using them as scapegoats. They need a target to blame for the rising rate of crime here."
The concerns of people such as Yano have been heightened after the Japanese government set loose a special investigation team in April to flush out illegal immigrants and meet a self-imposed deadline of halving the number of illegal aliens in Japan within five years.
According to the Justice Ministry, the new outfit will be made up of immigration officers and positioned in four areas of Tokyo with high concentrations of foreigners.
In the Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ikebukuro and Akasaka districts, the officers will work closely with police officers to identify foreigners who are working illegally.
According to the ministry, about 220,000 people have overstayed their visas and another 30,000 have been smuggled into Japan.
But of the tactics the authorities have deployed in the fight against foreigners, several have been strongly criticised.
World's safest country
In its white paper on crime for fiscal 2002, the National Police Agency reported a record 3.69 million crimes, an increase of 3.1% on the previous year and a new record for the seventh consecutive year.
And while the clean-up rate for crimes was an improvement on the previous year's 19.8% - the first time it had fallen below 20% since the end of World War II - an anaemic 20.8% was still too small for the authorities to be proud of.
"This is Japan, which is known as the safest country in the world. We have to seriously consider how we are going to restore that reputation," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said at the time.
The white paper singled out juveniles and foreigners as the leading causes of deteriorating public safety.
"Robberies perpetrated by foreigners became increasingly organised" during the year, the paper said. The situation "needs to be carefully monitored, because Japanese people are increasingly becoming the victims" of foreigners' criminal acts.
Amnesty International, Japan, has criticised the government's efforts to link rising crime to the foreign residents of the country as a political move to use "gaijin" - the pejorative Japanese word that literally means "outsiders" - as "scapegoats".
"We believe this is all part of the government's attempt to link
foreigners with crimes committed in Japan and it's simply propaganda," said Amnesty's Sonoko Kawakami.
"There were similar crackdowns on over-stayers in the early 1990s, but not like this. This is on a much larger scale."
Illegal residents
Amnesty was also outraged at the "big brother" tactics of Japan's Ministry of Justice.
It teamed up with other human rights organisations to demand that the ministry remove from its web site a section that encourages Japanese to inform on foreigners they suspect of being illegal residents.
The ministry's Immigration Bureau introduced the section on 16 February and, according to spokesman Mamoru Fukudaki, received more than 780 tip-offs from the public in the first month.
The site allows Japanese to report the presence of a foreigner in their neighbourhood whom they believe may be working or living in Japan without the appropriate documentation.
The site requests information such as name, nationality, home address or place of work, as well as the times they are most often at home.
The informant must also give a reason for reporting the person, with the choices including anxiety about the presence of foreigners.
"I don't think the ministry is even aware that this is discriminatory," said Kawakami. "They are under a lot of pressure from the public and the police and this just shows how racially discriminatory Japanese society has become in recent years."
And while it is true that many overstayers have violated the immigration laws, "the government must ask itself why", she added. "The reason is that Japanese don't want to do manual labour, which Japanese industry needs, so these people are contributing to Japanese society."
Known as the "3Ds" - for dirty, dangerous and difficult - foreigners work on building sites and in restaurant kitchens for lower wages and none of the benefits afforded to Japanese.
The ministry, however, remains unaffected by the criticism.
"There is no problem with using this internet system from a legal point of view and we are not thinking of stopping the system," Fukudaki said.
Yasushi Higashizawa, a lawyer and secretary general of the Japan Civil Liberties Union, expressed little surprise at the news.
"They fear pressure from the politicians and the public if they withdraw it," he said. "But that overlooks the fact that they are contravening the basic human rights of foreigners, most of whom are not connected in any way with misconduct or crimes."
Some foreigners, however, are fighting back.
Blatant racial discrimination
Debito Arudou is a vocal critic of racial discrimination in Japan since being refused entry to a hot spring in Hokkaido in 1999 on the grounds that he would scare the regular clients away.
He is calling on the prefectural government of Hokkaido to pass a local ordinance that would punish stores, restaurants, bars and any other public venue that turns a foreigner away.
A naturalised Japanese, who even changed his name from the original David Aldwinckle, he went as far as showing the owner of the hot spring his Japanese passport, but was still denied access.
Japan is the only developed nation in the world that does not have laws to specifically eliminate racial discrimination
Even more bizarrely, he says, the management said his oldest daughter, who more closely resembles her Japanese mother, could enter, but his three-year-old, Western-looking daughter, was banned.
"This is obviously not a matter of citizenship, it's a case of blatant racial discrimination," says Arudou, 39, originally from New York but a permanent resident of Hokkaido since 1991.
"I've been refused entry to discos, barber shops, a sporting goods store and bars - even with a Japanese passport and where the hostesses are all foreign.
"The reason is usually that foreign customers are known to be criminals and the management doesn't want them mixing with their regular clients," he added.
That argument leaves him fuming.
"No-one can tell who's a foreigner in Japan any more," he said. "There are now thousands of international marriages every year and you simply cannot tell by looking at a person's face whether they are Japanese or not."
A good first step to achieving an open and multicultural society in Japan, he says, would be for signs that read "Japanese only" or "No foreigners" to be removed from establishments across Hokkaido and, eventually, all of Japan.
If the Hokkaido government does pass the law that he has suggested, it will be the first of its kind in Japan, although Arudou is not optimistic.
Previous attempts have ended up with the proposal "buried in committees", although he is hopeful that one day, "it will happen and Japan will accept its internationalisation overnight".
Biddestone is a picturesque Cotswold village set around a village green with traditional pond and ducks. An ideal setting for a picnic or visit to one of the local hostelries. Situated in the north west corner of the county of Wiltshire, England it provides an ideal base for exploring the surrounding countryside, whether by car, on foot or by cycle.
Contractors deny that workers are being put at risk
A Greek union leader has warned that construction workers are risking their lives to try to get Athens ready for this summer's Olympic Games
サイトへのリンクは、サイドバーのLINKS BY BLOGPEOPLEの部分を見てください。
最初は、８サイトぐらいだったのですが、現在１９サイトになっています。
一応、イラクに住むイラク人の方のサイトのつもりでいますが、間違いがあるかもしれません。もちろんイラクにいる（主に）アメリカ人のサイトもありますが、それは別に登録しています。
The Japanese hostages should be released immediately and their captives should be punished sooner or latter if not by the Coalition by the Iraqis. Other hostages should be released as well and the maximum penalty should be used against their captives.
Concorde cone fetches thousands
The fleet first took off in 1969
An Italian buyer has splashed out thousands of pounds for a piece of aviation history at a Concorde auction in Warwickshire.
Concorde takes to the waves Concorde began its final and slowest journey as the last of the decommissioned fleet to be moved to a new permanent home was ferried down the Thames on the way to a museum in Scotland.
The aircraft once hailed as the future of air travel floated through the capital on a 225ft barge en route to the coast where it will be carried up the North Sea to the Museum of Flight near Edinburgh.
For Golf Bravo Oscar Alpha Alpha (G-BOAA), which in 1976 had flown the first British Airways commercial supersonic flight and travelled faster than a speeding bullet between continents at twice the altitude of a jumbo jet, it was a humble departure.
Hundreds of spectators still lined the river's banks and bridges to catch a glimpse of the aircraft as it passed at little more than walking pace. The vessel paused for an hour and a half from 4.30pm opposite the Houses of Parliament so that enthusiasts packing both sides of Westminster Bridge could snap one last photograph.
But shorn of its swept-back wings and tail to fit into the barge, the one-time Queen of the Skies appeared pitiful compared with the sleek shape booming through the heavens that was remembered by those who had come to say a last goodbye.
Even the trademark nose had been only temporarily stitched back on after being removed when the aircraft was squeezed into a trailer to carry it from Heathrow to the Thames at Isleworth. "Concorde was once a testament to British engineering and a pride to millions in this country," said Gavin Porter, a taxi driver from Hounslow waiting on the Embankment with his two children, Penny, seven, and Eliza, four.
"Now it looks like an Airfix model someone hasn't completed," he said.
"I loved that plane. I wish it was still flying as I would have liked to have gone on it one day," said Penny.
Half a dozen pleasure boats had accompanied the barge. Two vessels gave a couple of hoots of their horns as the aircraft's fuselage was lifted up to give the crowd a better view during its pause at Westminster.
At 6pm it was lowered back into its metal carrier and taken to Dartford. Today the top of the barge will be sealed and it will set off on the £300,000 six-day journey to Scotland.
Without licences from the Civil Aviation Authority, it could not fly.
Once it arrives at the museum the aircraft will undergo a four-month restoration before going on permanent display. The jet is the last of seven British Airways Concordes to find a home following the airline's decision last year to end commercial services. Three others remain in Britain and are on show at Heathrow airport, Manchester airport, and Filton in western England where the aircraft were made.
The others were sent abroad: to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, the Intrepid Sea Space Museum in New York, and Grantley Adams Airport in Barbados.
Japan frantic over hostage crisis
BBC News, April 12, 2004
Japanese newspapers are treating the country's hostage crisis the way they would cover the death of an emperor. Broadsheets have published special multi-page sections covering the emotional roller coaster the country has ridden over the past 24 hours.
After initial threats that the hostages would be killed if Japan did not pull its troops out of Iraq, there were reports they would be freed on Sunday.
But the day passed with no release, and their fate is now unknown. [complete article
Well... Kimmitt the frog has an interesting theory…
Today, he asked Iraqis to simply “CHANGE THE TV CHANNEL”…
What the!!!!!! I mean… he was answering a question of an Iraqi journalist, about how to enhance the image of the American Army, after Iraqis saw hundreds of civilians being killed in Falluja on the Arabic TV channels…
He said that twice! I swear to god! “Change the Channel”!!!
Healing Iraq
25歳の歯医者、Zeyadさんのサイト。イギリスで育ち、1987年から家族とともにイラクに戻られています。 今回の邦人人質事件でたくさんのメールを日本からもらわれたようです。
「自分にこの人質事件に何が出来ると言うの。」と言うのは全く同感です。
blogにはコメントできますが、量が凄い！
I had become frustrated with the negative media coverage from Iraq so I decided to start a blog myself to present the positive side which was not getting enough attention.：イラクに対して、酷いイメージしか報道しないメディアに失望し、ポジティブな部分を伝えたいと言うのがブログをはじめられたきっかけの一つのようです。
Captors threaten to start killing Japanese Sunday 11 April 2004, 19:37 Makka Time, 16:37 GMT
The kidnappers of three Japanese civilians have threatened to kill one of them within 24 hours if Tokyo does not withdraw its troops out of Iraq, a self-described Iraqi mediator has told Aljazeera satellite channel.
For militants, all westerners in Iraq are fair game
Six foreigners are confirmed to have been taken hostage in a new tactic by Iraqi insurgents - three Japanese nationals, two Arabs and an American.
Concorde began its final and slowest journey as the last of the decommissioned fleet to be moved to a new permanent home was ferried down the Thames on the way to a museum in Scotland.
