Japan minorities call for anti-discrimination law

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

TOKYO, Mar 7: The Japanese government should recognise that minorities are subject to discrimination in the country and should enact a law against it, representatives and supporters of various minority groups said today.

While Japan is often considered to be a racially homogeneous society, the population includes minority groups such as ethnic Koreans and Chinese, some of them descendants of people forcibly brought over before and during World War Two.

Other groups include the Ainu, indigenous to northern Japan, and burakumin, descendents of people who were at the bottom of a now-abolished caste-like system dating back to feudal times.

''A law alone would not solve everything,'' said Shigeyuki Kumisaka, president of the Buraku Liberation League, which has been fighting for the rights of the burakumin.

The burakumin are racially and culturally indistinguishable from other Japanese but have suffered discrimination in jobs and marriages for centuries.

''But a law would be educational and would put the brakes on discrimination,'' he told a news conference along with other minority groups.

Their call is in line with a United Nations report made public in January, which found clear evidence of discrimination against minorities in Japan and urged Tokyo to pass a national law against it.

In the report, compiled after his visit to Japan in July 2005, Doudou Diene, UN special rapporteur on racism and xenophobia, said he was concerned about the lack of such a law, which should also provide judicial remedy for victims of discrimination.

Japan's constitution bans discrimination, including that based on race, but does not specify any penalties.

Besides the ethnic and indigenous groups, Japan has seen a slow but steady flow of immigrants recently from a wide range of nations, some of whom have also faced discrimination in areas such as housing.

Most of the discrimination is hardly visible, the minority groups said, making it hard for the Japanese public to be aware of its existence.

''In my experience here in Japan, many Japanese do not realise that there is racism here,'' said Leny Tolentino, who works for the Migrant Women Empowerment Center, which helps out foreign women working here and their children.

''It is important to clearly say in the law that there is discrimination in Japan.... And I hope this will open the eyes of the society,'' said Tolentino, a Filipina who has been in Japan for more than 17 years.

Political parties have made moves to submit anti-discrimination legislation to parliament, but opposition by conservative lawmakers has stalled the attempts to pass laws.

''We have a myth that the Japanese archipelago is inhabited by a single race, the Japanese ... There is supposed to be nobody other than the Japanese,'' said Kinhide Mushakoji, an academic who heads the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism Japan Committee.

''It's good that now the myth is going to be challenged in the United Nations thanks to the Diene report,'' he said.

REUTERS

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