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Japan plans to slash visas to Filipinos to curb sex trade
November 24, 3004
Tokyo - Japan plans to slash ten-fold the number of visas issued to Filipinos
as "entertainers" in a bid to stop sex trafficking, a problem of which the the
scale has seen Japan put on a US watchlist.
Japan would trim the number of entertainment visas issued to Filipinos from
80,000 to 8,000 a year, according to Kyodo News, which said it obtained a
government action plan against human trafficking.
Japan offers six-month residency to certified dancers, singers or other
entertainers, but rights activists say the provision is abused by traffickers
to bring in women -- often Filipinas -- and push them into the sex trade.
Japan would decrease the number of visas by demanding more from applicants, who
currently need only to show that they are certified in an art by their home
country, Kyodo News said.
Besides Filipinos, Japan annually issues between 6,000 and 7,000 entertainment
visas each to citizens of the United States, China and Russia.
Japan has vowed to do more to stop the sex trade after a damning US report in
June that put its close ally on a watchlist of countries involved in human
trafficking.
The US State Department had said Japan has "a huge problem with slavery,
particularly sex slavery" but that there was a "tremendous gap" between the
size of the problem and the resources devoted to addressing it. - AFP
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