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Japan blasted over human trafficking
November 21, 2004
Tokyo - Victims of human trafficking in Japan are not protected and are treated
like criminals, according to a special report compiled by the International
Labor Organization.
The organization's Tokyo office has begun distributing copies of the report to
relevant government and nonprofit organizations.
The report is the second to criticize Japan's handling of human trafficking,
following the U.S. State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons Report,
which was released in June.
It highlighted a lack of anti-trafficking measures in Japan to protect foreign
women forced to work in the sex industry, and ministries and agencies are
likely to respond quickly.
Titled "Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation in Japan," the report
apportioned about 20 percent of its 81 pages to victims in Japan.
The report cited case studies compiled by ILO staffers and others who
interviewed female victims and says many women did not come to Japan aiming to
become prostitutes, but were forced to do so.
According to the report, a 20-year-old Colombian woman came to Japan because
she had been told she could work at a personal computer shop, but on her
arrival, gangsters took her passport and forced her to work as a prostitute in
Tokyo.
A Thai woman who had been promised a job at a Thai restaurant was told by a
Japanese man that she owed him 4.8 million yen for traveling costs, among other
expenses, the report says. She was forced to work at a bar in a provincial area
and have sex with three to four men a day, the report says.
A Filipina who refused to cooperate was beaten and raped by her employer in
front of his male employees, according to the report.
Women from Southeast Asia, South America and Eastern Europe have become victims
of human trafficking, but Japanese bureaucrats seem to be blind to the issue,
regarding them as illegal residents who entered the country of their own will,
the report says.
In Japan, "victims of trafficking may be perceived to be voluntary participants
in illegal immigration, which thereby removes their right to protection," the
report added.
The report points out that "traffickers retain their profits and are rarely
prosecuted. When they are, it is not necessarily in proportion to their
crimes."
But the report praises the government's attempts to "address human trafficking
since the beginning of 2004."
In the U.S. State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons Report, Japan was
the only industrially developed country to be included in the Tier 2 List for
Trafficking. Countries on the list do not meet minimum U.S. standards for
combating trafficking, but are making efforts to comply.
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