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The foreign angle
By Takaya Kawasaki
July 8, 2003
The Chunichi Shimbun bemoans the lack of human trafficking laws in Japan, which
is encouraging devious pimps to bring huge numbers of foreign women to Japan,
many under false pretenses, to work in the flesh trade.
One "broker," nicknamed "Sony," whose income last year topped 31 million yen,
was arrested in December 2002 on charges of violating the Immigration Control
and Employment Security Law after sending Colombian women to work in strip
theaters around Yamanashi.
He was believed to have met hundreds of women at Narita Airport, taken away
their passports, and then indebted them by charging huge "broker's
commissions." After taking pictures of them naked, he sent them to work in the
sex trade. He was found guilty and sent down for a year and ten months.
However, welfare groups, appalled by lenient sentencing, say such short prison
terms merely promote the influx of foreign women.
"In the U.S., for example, this kind of broker will get 20 or 30 years in
prison," says Keiko Otsu, a director of "Help," a group which provides shelter
to victims. "The problem is that there are no rules and legislations against
human trafficking from foreign countries to provide sex workers in Japan."
"There is no awareness of foreign women as victims. On the contrary, victims
are just believed to be disrupting the sexual morality of society," says Otsu.
The Mainichi Shimbun reveals that community-minded Osaka City officials have
for the first time begun to recruit volunteers in a bid to provide support to
foreign residents in case of emergencies.
The municipality hopes to gather around 100 volunteers who can help foreigners
in their community through interpretation or by working as advisers in the case
of disasters such as earthquakes or flooding.
This is the first official project of its kind in the Kansai metropolitan
district, despite harsh lessons learned in the aftermath of the Great Hanshin
Earthquake in January 1995, which killed more than six thousand people.
Presently, there are about 211,900 foreigners, from 141 countries, living in
Osaka.
Following on from a recent Yomiuri Weekly report detailing the recruitment of a
Peruvian to collect city tax from foreigners in Yamato City, a Brazilian woman
hired by Hamamatsu City for similar reasons has leaped to the defense of
tax-defaulting foreign residents, the Shizuoka Shimbun reports.
The tax collector was hired in January by the city, which has unpaid tax bills
of 6,780 million yen.
"The Japanese taxation system is quite different from foreign ones," argues the
second generation Japanese-Brazilian woman, who has lived in the city for four
years and taught fine arts and Japanese in a local Brazilian school until being
employed by the city.
"When it comes to Brazilians, for example, they have difficulties not only
overcoming the linguistic barrier, but also in understanding the system of
provincial taxes, because they don't have same kind of system in their own
country."
She has made posters and fliers, written in Portuguese, to explain the system
to foreign residents.
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Japan:
pink heaven for traffickers
2-1-2004
53
human trafficking victims suspected among
deported in February
7-6-2003
Sex
trade exploitation: Destination Japan
6-25-2003 |
