Cold Comfort for Uprising Sons (App

[brelief@xxxxxxx]

Cold Comfort for Uprising Sons
By ROY K. AKAGAWA 
Asahi Evening News
January 25, 1998

>From a beacon of hope and freedom, Japan has become a source of icy cynicism
to exiles who exchanged repression in Myanmar and China for a life here of
perpetual anxiety, caused by a government loath to grant asylum.

While Japan may appear to be a beacon of democracy in Asia for those living
in less developed, neighboring nations, individuals who have come to Japan
seeking to push for democracy back home have often to deal with a
cold-hearted bureaucracy and widespread public apathy.

"We knew Japan was a very developed, democratic nation which was totally
different from our country," said Kyaw Loon Tin. "If we work in Japan we can
get a very good salary and we can support our family and continue our
democracy activities."

Kyaw Loon Tin arrived in Japan in September 1992, fleeing his native Myanmar
(Burma) where he had participated in student demonstrations calling for
democracy in 1988, the year he graduated from university.

The past five years have changed his image. "We feel like prisoners here in
Japan," he said.

Unlike fellow pro-democracy activists in the United States, Australia and
elsewhere who can travel freely for their cause, he and his comrades in
Japan are kept in a state of limbo as they await a decision on their
applications for refugee status.

Kyaw Loon Tin is one of about 80 Burmese who have filed for refugee status
since 1992. Until now, not one of their applications has been approved,
according to Shogo Watanabe, a lawyer who is also secretary-general of the
People's Forum on Burma.

Eleven of the first group of 12 applicants in 1992 had their requests turned
down in November 1994, ostensibly because they failed to file their
applications within 60 days of arriving in Japan or of learning that they
would face persecution in their native country should they return, a major
condition for defining an individual as a refugee. This "60 day rule" has
often been used as a procedural tactic to summarily reject applications
without bothering to investigate their background, according to critics of
Japan's refugee recognition system. That first group of applicants appealed
the Justice Ministry decision and is now awaiting further government action.

Watanabe is hoping that an applicant who filed in December 1996 will prove
to be a breakthrough for recognition of refugees from Myanmar.

Tin Win arrived in Japan in November 1996 and filed for refugee status the
next month. However, even for Tin Win, who clearly meets the 60-day rule,
there is no certainty of success. Since filing the application, Tin Win said
he has not heard a single word from immigration officials about his case.

Yuichi Suzuki, foreign liaison officer of the Refugee Recognition Office at
the Justice Ministry, explained that before interviews are held, the
veracity of information entered on application forms is first checked. This
often involves making inquiries back in the applicant's home nation, slowing
down the whole procedure.

"(The Japanese government officials) don't want to acknowledge us as
refugees so they are delaying the process," Tin Win said.

He said he was puzzled by the government's hesitancy to grant refugee status.

"It is so strange that the Japanese government doesn't accept refugees since
two of the most prominent individuals in the refugee field are Japanese,
Sadako Ogata and Yozo Yokota," he said.

Ogata is the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Yokota, a University of
Tokyo professor, was a special rapporteur assigned to Myanmar by the U.N.
Human Rights Commission, succeeding Ogata in that role in 1991 after she was
named high commissioner. 

Manual work and agitation 

Tin Win, 43, now works at a components factory for construction machines in
Kuzu, Tochigi Prefecture, while worrying constantly about his wife and three
children in Myanmar. At weekends, he travels three hours by train to discuss
plans with fellow democracy agitators in Tokyo. 

He left his Myanmar reluctantly, feeling he was abandoning not only his
family but also his colleagues in the National League for Democracy, the
leading opposition party led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the winner of the Nobel
Peace Prize. 

"I didn't want to escape just for my own sake. My mentor told me that you
cannot do anything if you are in jail," said Tin Win. He fled first to that
Thailand, then crossed into Malaysia and Singapore, before returning to
Thailand to make the final trip to Tokyo, where he landed in November 1996.
He apparently left Myanmar in the nick of time.

"I learned after I left Rangoon that I had been given a 7-year prison
sentence in absentia," Tin Win said.

In addition, he later learned that on the very night when he fled the
country, government authorities raided both his home in Mandalay and the
office where he had been hiding in Yangon (Rangoon).

He was detained once before between September 1988 and February 1989.
Government officials told him that he was being held because he had
participated in the anti- government demonstrations held during much of 1988
although he was never told the exact Charges against him.

After working to establish a political party in Mandalay for Muslims, Tin
Win eventually became a secretary for the United Solidarity Front, which was
a merger of 12 parties centered in Mandalay. Later, when that party was
dissolved in 1990 to merge with the NLD in a united opposition, Tin Win
joined the party's research bureau in Mandalay, where he was given the task
of studying Japan's political development.

Eyes opened to Japan

Hardened by the experience, Tin Win did not come to Japan expecting a land
of golden opportunity and full democracy.

"I knew that Japan puts economics and business first and doesn't care about
democracy and human rights of other countries," he said.

He added that there were also positive aspects to Japan, such as its low
crime rate, high standard of hygiene and industrious and eager workforce,
that he had also learned
from his research.

After his departure, the apparel shop he operated in Mandalay was
confiscated by the authorities along with other property he owned. In an
ironic and cruel twist of fate, Tin Win later learned that the land where
his shop was located ? part of a large marketplace that used to be one of
the major centers of the city ? had been bulldozed over and a resort hotel
is set to be built on the land by a Japanese company.

His wife and children left their home in Mandalay to live with his wife's
mother in Yangon because there was no longer a source of income in Mandalay.

Having studied economics in college and run his own business, Tim Win never
had to perform physical labor back in Myanmar so he finds the job in Kuzu
difficult. In addition, because he is in Japan on a temporary stay visa, he
cannot apply for national health insurance, meaning he is also constantly
anxious about how to pay for medical treatment in the event of a job-related
injury.

Now that he has filed for refugee status in Japan he is caught up in a
bureaucratic wrangle that at times borders on the ridiculous.

Every three months he has to apply for an extension of his temporary visa,
requiring him to take two days off from work: one day to come to the
Immigration Office in Tokyo's Otemachi to submit the relevant application;
another day to return to Otemachi to have his passport duly stamped.

He is also prevented from traveling to other countries while his application
is being processed. Although he said he came to Japan by accident, he now
takes a more philosophical approach about his situation and hopes to use it
to his advantage. "I want to stay here because I want to explain to the
Japanese people the situation in Burma and ask them to help us," said Tin
Win. He said because Japan is the largest economic aid donor to Myanmar the
government has great leverage over his native land.

"We can say that Japan is a democratic nation, but the people have very
little idea of what democracy is or what fighting for a democracy movement
means," he said.

He said he hoped the Japanese people would change their attitudes and become
more concerned and involved with other nations.

"I want Japan to lead Asia as a political power," he said in part because he
fears an emergence of a powerful China in the region.
He is placing his hopes on the new generation of Japanese and intends to
remain in Japan to help educate them.

"I don't blame the people of Japan," Tin Win said.  "I blame the politicians
of Japan because they are trying to save face with the military government
in Burma."

Processed as snail's pace
The snail's pace at which refugee applications are being processed does not
surprise those involved in refugee issues in Japan.  Since Japan acceded to
the U.N. Convention on the Status of Refugees in 1982, its record in
accepting refugees has hardly merited praise.

Out of 272 applications between 1994 and 1996, only one individual each year
was certified here as a refugee.  For the first 11 months of 1997, only one
application was 
was approved, although 233 were submitted.

Since 1982, Japan has certified 210 refugees.  More than half, or 130, were
certified in 1982 and 1983.

By contrast Canada, often cited for its generous asylum policy, in 1996
alone considered about 21,800 applications for refugee status and accepted
9,540 claims, while 7,040 were rejected and 5,220 were either withdrawn or
abandoned.

"We may also more strictly interpret the definition of refugee set out in
the treaty than other nations (where the numbers of refugees accepted are
much larger)," explained Suzuki of the Justice Ministry.

Worldwide tightening

The issue of declining numbers of refugees accepted by developed Western
nations is not confined to Japan alone. The United Nations Office of High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warned in a report issued last December
that "it is becoming increasingly difficult for refugees to find a place of
safety beyond the borders of their homeland."

The report also stated that over the past ten years, about five million
people who sought asylum in Western Europe, North America and Australasia
have faced "an array of different measures intended to prevent or deter
people from seeking refuge." 

In spite of this harsher international environment, lawyer Watanabe said
Japan still has much to do to earn the respect of the world community.
"Japan must first fulfill its obligations in accepting refugees before it
can think about shutting its borders to foreigners," Watanabe said.
"Although there remains the question of whether or not other Western nations
have done enough, those nations have accepted far larger numbers of refugees
than Japan, so there can be some discussion in those nations of reducing
those numbers." 

Suzuki of the Justice Ministry said that Japanese society in general does
not appear very accommodating for foreigners, judging by the few foreigners
who apply for refugee status.

The difficulty of living in Japan without refugee status and the low
possibility of gaining that status forced a young Chinese to leave the
nation reluctantly for a new life in Norway.

Chen Decheng left Tokyo on Wednesday after having spent the last two years
at the Immigration Detention Center in Ushiku, Ibaraki Prefecture.

"Japan is a democracy so I was hoping for a sympathetic ear to my efforts in
the democracy movement," Chen, 35, said prior to his departure.

He first arrived in Japan in August 1988 to study the language before
eventually moving to his original goal of studying architecture.  However,
the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989 changed his plans and life
dramatically.

He participated in demonstrations in front of the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo
and was later visited by Chinese security officials from the embassy.
Realizing he would end up in prison if he returned to china, he planned to
go to Canada with 17 other Chinese in December 1989, but they were all
detained at Seoul's Kimpo Airport and returned to Japan after immigration
officials there discovered that the passports provided by the travel agency
were forgeries.

Chen and his fellow countrymen insisted they left Japan with legitimate
passports and did not know how the fake passports got into the hands of
officials in the Republic of Korea (South Korea).

Chen was later denied an extension of his visa to remain legally in Japan.
He was tried and found guilty of violating immigration laws in October, 1995
and given a sentence of two years, suspended for three years.  He was then
immediately taken into custody at the East Japan Immigration Detention Center.

Chen applied for refugee status in November 1995, but the application was
turned down in December because he had failed the "60 day rule."

Headaches, insomnia

The ensuing two years was to Chen "a waste of time" as he awaited some
action by the Japanese government. Ordered to leave Japan, Chen refused to
return to China out of fear of imprisonment there. Uncertain about his
future, and having too much time on his hands to think and worry, he began
to suffer from headaches and insomnia that required almost daily doses of
medicine, Chen said.

The government bureaucracy here has been unforgiving to the very end,
allowing Chen only two weeks to prepare for leaving the country.

"I lived in Japan for nine years, so I cannot take care of everything in two
weeks," Chen said.

Among things to be settled was the restaurant and trading company he had set
up during his time in Japan.

No explanation was made to Chen for the delay in granting
the provisional release order that would allow him to leave Japan, even
after Norway declared that it was ready and willing to accept him as a
refugee last summer.

While he has been told that he would be eligible for six months of free
schooling in Norway as well as an apartment and living expenses Chen
admitted he was concerned about life in his new home.

"If I go to a new country, I will not know anything, from the language to
the different customs and habits of the people " Chen said. He added that
all that he learned in Japan over the past nine years, including not only
the language, but lifestyle, habits and customs, would go to waste if he
moved to a new country.

Politics over freedom

His lawyer, Kazuo Ito, thinks political considerations had a great deal to
do with the Japanese government's decision not to certify as refugees any
Chinese, including Chen.

"The Japanese government will not certify refugees from China because that
would mean that Japan was saying that China lacked human rights," said Ito.
"Before Japan could do that, the Chinese government would probably apply
some sort of pressure."

Ito said the present refugee certification system in which final approval
has to be given by the justice minister was also partly to blame for the
lack of certification.

He explained that since the justice minister was a member of the Cabinet,
any decision made would necessarily have political implications. For this
reason, Ito suggested that a semi-autonomous body removed from the
government should be established to certify refugees.

Chen said about the only good memories he will take with him of Japan to
Norway are the small number of people, such as Ito and officials of the
UNHCR branch office in
Japan and other non-governmental organizations, who
helped him avoid the fate of being sent back to China.

The support and understanding of a small group of
Japanese also have been about the only meaningful
assistance those from Myanmar have received.
Kyaw Loon Tin and a fellow activist, Pyone Cho, said they have been helped
by landlords and bosses who realize
the special circumstances they face and allow them, for example, to take
time off from work to participate in demonstrations and other political
activities in Tokyo.
Among the citizens' groups that have been set up to support the efforts of
the activists is the People's Forum on Burma, which was established in
December 1996.
The group currently has about 160 members.

Kyaw Loon Tin and Pyone Cho first met aboard a Thai-owned cargo ship. Kyaw
Loon Tin had sought the job aboard the vessel because he felt that it would
one day give him the opportunity to go to a foreign land. After sailing
mainly to nations in Southeast Asia such as Malaysia and Indonesia, the two
worked on a ship that transported cement from China to Japan.

The two of them, along with three others from Myanmar, jumped ship in
September 1992 at the port of Kushiro on Hokkaido. They contacted officials
of the Burmese Association of Japan for help in coming to Tokyo.

Watanabe explained the many Burmese at first considered Japan a beacon in
the world for democratization of their country. This was the result of much
publicity in Myanmar about the Burmese Association in Japan, established
soon after the military coup d'etat in September 1988 led to the creation of
the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), which took over control
of all aspects of government.

Special care must be taken by members of the Burmese democracy movement
exiled in Japan about contacts with
family members back in Myanmar who are subject to government surveillance.

The main group now active in Japan is the National League for Democracy
(Liberated Area), Japan Branch, which was formed in May 1995 through the
amalgamation of several pro-democracy forces, including the Burmese
Association in Japan.

Tin Win said he had not contacted his family directly since leaving Myanmar

"When we are talking to our family on the telephone we can only give social
greetings such as 'How are you?' " said Kyaw Loon Tin. "We cannot discuss
any political  issues with our family members."

He said the Myanmar government had a list of all activists In Japan and were
tracking documents sent to family members from Japan as well as tapping
telephone calls.
 
Because of such surveillance, any hint of criticism of the government could
place their family members in trouble, Kyaw Loon Tin said.

Both Kyaw Loon Tin and Pyone Cho also feel the economic assistance sent by
the Japanese government to Myanmar does not benefit the general population
in their homeland.

"The intention of the ODA is to help the people, which is good, but in fact
it will only benefit the generals, not the people of Burma," said Kyaw Loon Tin.

For this reason, democracy activists in Japan are calling on Tokyo to end
ODA outlays to their country.

Before coming to Japan, the two had an image of Japan as a rich and
democratic nation.

"Because Japan is an economically powerful nation, it has influence over
Southeast Asian nations, including Burma," said Pyone Cho. "I thought that
if our activities are strong in Japan we can influence the Japanese
government to put pressure on the government in Burma."

Disillusioned by Japan

However, the failure of the Japanese government to grant refugee status to
Kyaw Loon Tin has dimmed not only his hopes that some change can be made
through the Japanese government, but also darkened his outlook on staying in
Japan.

"We are facing so many difficulties here so when my younger sister thought
about leaving Burma I told her she would not have a good future in Japan,"'
he said.

Because Kyaw Loon Tin had an aunt living in Australia as a permanent
resident, he advised his younger sister to go there. He sent money saved
from his jobs in Japan so that his sister could go to Australia and apply
for refugee status. Within a month of her arrival, she was granted that
status and given permanent residency, he said.

The activists stressed that they would not return to their homeland until
democracy was established.

"We don't want to surrender or betray our belief in democracy," said Kyaw
Loon Tin.

While Tin Win said he would go back to his country immediately if he could
do so in safety, all agreed that unless Myanmar became a democracy they
would have to stay in Japan.

"We don't want to go back to a nation that is not democratic," said Kyaw
Loon Tin. "We have nowhere to go but Japan. We have to stay and struggle."

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