February 23, 2004
Dear Sir/Madam,
The Immigration Bureau, being under the control
of the Japanese Ministry of Justice, launched a system for collecting
information about illegally overstaying foreigners via the Immigration
Bureau’s Internet homepage from the general public on February
16, 2004. To protest against the measure, we immediately sent the protest
note, which is enclosed for your reference, to both the Minister of
Justice and the Director of the Immigration Bureau.
Anti-foreignism, especially against people from
Asian and South American nations, is becoming more prevalent in Japan
these days. Remarks made by the Immigration Bureau, media, and people
in government services are mainly to blame for anti-foreign atmosphere
in which this unforgivable system has emerged.
The Government’s measures for collecting
information on specific groups of people from the public led to a lot
of human rights violations in the past. In order to stop such a system,
we would like to ask for your support to prevent human rights abuses.
It would be very helpful if you could send protest notes to the Japanese
Government from abroad. We sincerely look forward to your action.
Suggested action protest
1: Please send a protest note by mail to the address below.
Mr. Taizo Nozawa
Minister of Justice
1-1-1 Kasumigaseki Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 100-8977 Japan
Mr. Nobuya Masuda
Director of the Immigration Bureau
1-1-1 Kasumigaseki Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 100-8977 Japan
2: Please protest using telephone or fax to the
numbers below.
The Ministry of Justice:
Tel: 03-3580-4111
Fax: 03-3592-7393
3: If you write Japanese, you may also contribute
articles directly to the homepage of
the Immigration Bureau in Japan.
E-mail address of the Immigration Bureau·s homepage:
http:www.immi-moj.go.jp/cgi-bin/datainput.cgi
Sincerely,
Bishop Marcellino Daiji Tani
Bishop of Saitama
Chairman
Catholic Commission of Japan for Migrants,
Refugees and People on the Move
----------------------------------------
Ministry of Justice
Minister of Justice
Taizo Nozawa
Immigration Bureau
Immigration Bureau Chief
Nobuya Masuda
Protest against asking the public to send in
by email information about illegal foreign residents
Since February 16, 2004 there has been a system
on the web site of the Immigration Bureau whereby information concerning
illegal foreign residents can be sent in to the Bureau by email.
Regarding the request for information from the
general public concerning one particular group, the Catholic Commission
of Japan for Migrants, Refugees and People on the Move protests this
blatant violation of the rights of foreign residents of Japan.
This action recalls the Campaign to Rid Prefectures
of Hansen's Disease which forcibly isolated Hansen's Disease patients,
and which was based on information provided by the general public. By
using the public to gather information about a particular group, the
Government is stirring up anti-foreign sentiments, something that is
clearly wrong and will lead to human rights being violated.
We express our misgivings about the Government
stirring up persistent prejudice and discrimination against not only
'illegal foreign residents' but also various other foreign residents,
and also have to point out that the Government is violating the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
(Article 4, etc.) which it signed and ratified in 1995, and which came
into effect in 1996.
We ask that the system for receiving information
on the web site be discontinued immediately.
Sincerely,
February 18,2004
Catholic Commission of Japan for Migrants,
Refugees and People on the Move
Daiji Tani,Chairman (Bishop of Saitama)
Petition to request to Stop the Solicitation and Provision of Information
of information Regarding Illegal Over-stay, etc. on the Homepage of
the Ministry of Justice Immigration Control Bureau.
On 16 February 2004 the Ministry of Justice Immigration Control Bureau
began accepting on their homepage ?nformation Concerning Foreigners
who are
Overstaying, etc. At the Solidarity Network with Migrants Japan, together
with the Executive Committee for the Movement for Foreign Workers Livelihood
and Human
Rights, we published the enclosed petition, and brought it to the Ministry
of
Justice on 19 February. On the 19th when we presented our request, the
Ministry officials replied, some people want to be able to provide information
through e-mail, and we carried out their request for their convenience.
They stated that they had absolutely no intention of infringing on human
rights by pursuing convenience. In order to bring
about the immediate cessation of this sort of information provision,
we need to move against the the Ministry of Justice, and collect signatures
from individuals and groups on this petition.
For the past several months, we have seen an increase in actions that
fan anti-foreign prejudice and strengthen discrimination against them,
such as the strengthening of crackdowns in the name of joint Declaration
of the Tokyo City Government, Public Safety Measures, Measures to Combat
Foreign Criminals, and other such discriminatory language. The current
encouragement of Information Provision on the homepage violates the
human rights of foreigners, and moreover impels Japanese society to
become a society of policing and secret reporting. Japanese citizens
must raise their voices against this situation.
If you are in agreement with this position, whether you are a group
or an individual, please fill out the form below and fax or e-mail it
to the Solidarity Network with migrants Japan office. We hope to collect
signatures from as many people as possible.
Solidarity Network with Migrants Japan
Office Head: Yano Manami
Reply by FAX to: 03-5802-6034; e-mail fmwj@jca.apc.org by 15 March.
---------------------------------------------------------------
I approve of the Petition to request to Stop the Solicitation and
Provision of Information of information Regarding Illegal Overstayers,
etc. on the
Homepage of the Ministry of Justice Immigration Control Bureau
Group Approval
Group Name:---------------------------------
Address:-----------------------------------------
*Name of person in charge:-----------------------------------
*We will not publish the name of the person in charge, but we need it
to
contact you at a later date.
Individual Approval:
Name: -------------------------------------.
I approve of my name being published: -----yes -----no
Affiliation:------------------------------------------------
*Contact address:---------------------------------------------------
*We will not publish it but we need it to contact you at a later date.
---------------------------------------------------------------
2/19/2004
Minister of Justice Mr. NOZAWA Daizo
Director General of the Ministry of Justice Immigration Control Bureau
Mr. MASUD Nobuya
Request to Stop the Solicitation and Provision of Information on the
Homepage of the Ministry of Justice Immigration Control Bureau
On 16 February 2004 the Ministry of Justice Immigration Control Bureau
began accepting on their homepage ?nformation Concerning Foreigners
who are Overstaying, etc. With this, if one inputs personal information
such as the name, nationality, address, telephone number, workplace,
or other information which would verify an individual, it is forwarded
automatically as e-mail to the local immigration office in the jurisdiction,
without disclosing the name, address, or e-mail address of the informant.
Anyone could easily provide such information. We are deeply disturbed
by this solicitation of information which one might call foreigner Hunting,
and we request its immediate cessation.
There are over 2,000,000 foreigners now living in Japan. No matter what
their visa status, they live, work, and commute to school, just like
the rest of us. They are our colleagues and our neighbors. Foreigners
who work in small-to-medium sized enterprises and factories, and on
construction sites, are sustaining Japanese industry and the whole economy.
Moreover, the strong rights consciousness that foreign workers hold
is raising the consciousness of Japanese, and activities surrounding
labor unions and human rights and peace are enlivened by them. When
foreigners of many different racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds
live in our neighborhoods, Japanese learn mutual respect for others,
becoming a more diverse and rich multiethnic society where many cultures
can coexist. The e-mail information solicitation of the Ministry of
Justice Immigration Control Bureau goes against this trend, induces
residents to police foreigners, fans anti-foreign sentiment, and feeds
the tendency to equate foreigners with criminals.
A system that polices and secretly reports as
criminals the foreign residents who are our good neighbors and colleagues
tramples the human rights of foreigners. We cannot permit this sort
of system.
Facilitating the disclosure in secret of such personal information by
e-mail harms the mutual trust of local residents and creates a society
of suspicion. This undermines our democracy.
We request the Ministry of Justice to cease immediately the e-mail solicitation
of information on its home-page that infringes upon the human rights
of foreigners in Japan.
The best way to solve the problem of irregular stayers is to regularize
their residency status according to the reality of their livelihoods
in Japan. We ask that the Japanese government change this policy to
one that moves us toward a multiethnic, multicultural, co-existent society.
Solidarity Network with Migrants Japan
Tokyo-to Bunkyo-ku Koishikawa 2-17-41 TCC2-203
Telephone: 03-5802-6033 Fax: 03-5802-6034
Representatives: OTSU Keiko, NIWA Masao, MURAYAMA
Satoshi, MORIKI Kazumi,
YUI Shigeru, WATANABE Hidetoshi
The Committee for the Day for Migrant Workers Rights
Tokyo-to Taito-ku Ueno 1-1-12 Shinhirokouji Building 5F
c/o Zentoitsu Worker? Union
Telephone: 03-3836-9061 Fax: 03-3836-9077
Respect us being human and stop the overkill
of
our rights as foreign migrants now!
(Statement of participants of the Filipino Community Leaders Convention
Tsunagareto Gender Equality Center, Chiyoda-ku, Nagoya City, February
29, 2004)
We, the participants of the convention of Filipino
community leaders in Japan is raising our concerns and appeal to immediately
pull down the immigration bureau webpage wherein the public are encouraged
to send in by email information about illegal foreign residents. While
we as ordinary foreign people do not question the authority to implement
the rule for the Japanese public interest, we are duty bound to express
that the said webpage introduced last February 16, 2004 is an outright
violation to the rights and welfare of all foreign migrants in the country.
Treating the overstaying foreigners as criminal
based on The Immigration Control And Refugee Recoginition Act ammendment
and was enforced starting Ferbuary 2000 is more than enough to make
people in Japan believe that overstaying of foreigners is a crime. There
is no other country especially among members of G8 countries that treat
overstaying beyond allowed visa permit as crime except Japan. The objectionable
webpage is viewed as an agitation among Japanese people to be against
foreigners and encouraging the Japanese public to do such action like
reporting over the web on the presence of suspected illegal foreigners.
This is an overkill to the human rights regardless of visa status of
all of us foreigners as well as Japanese children with half foreign
blood relations living in the country.
The immigration bureau web page hype contravenes
the signed international conventions that Japan acceded like the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
(signed on 15 December 1995). The International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, to which Japan became party in 1979 to prohibit discrimination
on the grounds of race or ethnicity, is in complete disregard by the
web page posting.
The much protested web page will results to heigthened
public prejudices not only against visa overstayers and illegal entrants
but against all foreign parents especially women and their Japanese
children and the foreign-Japanese families. To mention just a few, this
webpage is now an added armory for abusers of domestic violence against
foreign women and Japanese children of half foreign parentage. If marital
conflict between Japanese-foreign couple, the threat of not giving a
visa sponsorship to the foreign spouse of Japanese can now be coupled
with threat of the Japanese spouse to make email report to the immigration
of his/her partner as an overstayer as potential case maybe. The growth
of Japanese children with threatened foreign parentage also suffers.
The web page in protest is an act that the Japanese
government is outrigthly violating the Convention on the Rights of the
Child (signed by the Government of Japan, 24 April 1994), United Nation’s
International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (Signed
by the Government of Japan, 21 June 1979), and the Convention for the
Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women or CEDAW (Signed
by the Government of Japan, 25 June 1985).
Even foreigners as we are, this statement is
to express our care for the Japanese government to continue to strive
in realizing a society without any form of racial and ethnic discrimination
as has been declared in the above international convention that Japan
became a party, signed and adheres with. It was indeed upholding the
principle of the Japanese constitution as stipulated in Paragraph 1
Article 14 that “all of the people are equal under the law and
there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations
because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin,”
as the fundamental reasons behind Japan being a party and signatory
to the above international conventions.
Should there be some in the public who cannot
easily understand the presence of all of us foreign migrants, the act
of the government should be based on the fundamentals of the constitution
and with its commitment to the above signed international conventions.
The government should use the international conventions as instrument
in educating the public as her obligation to the international community
to avoid unecessary promotions of anti-foreign sentiments among the
public.
Shutting down now the immigration bureau web
page that promotes hatred to other people race is the common desire
not only among us as foreigners and foreign-loving Japanese in Japan
but as well as by the international community.
Participants of the Filipino Community Leaders
Convention
Tsunagareto Gender Equality Center
Chiyoda-ku, Nagoya City
February 29, 2004
Signatories:
Filipino Migrants Center (FMC) – Nagoya
Center for Japanese-Filipino Families (CJFF) – Tokyo
MIGRANTE Party List – Japan Chapter
Filipina Circle for Advancement and Progress (FICAP) – Aichi
Kalipunan ng mga Filipinong Nagkakaisa (KAFIN) - Saitama
Kalipunan ng mga Filipinong Nagkakaisa (KAFIN) – Tokyo
Kalipunan ng mga Filipinong Nagkakaisa (KAFIN) – Nagoya
Kalipunan ng mga Filipinong Nagkakaisa (KAFIN) – Osaka
Philippine Society in Japan (PSJ) – Nagoya
League of Filipino Seniors (LFS) – Nagoya
Ecumenical Learning Center for Children (ELCC) – Nagoya
Suwa Catholic Church Filipino Community - Nagano