By Todd Crowell
TOKYO
Four Syrian asylum seekers are challenging one of the most stringent asylum records in the world, demanding that a country that granted sanctuary to just 11 people last year allow them to stay.
The four men -- aged 22 to 35 -- are part of a group of 61 Syrians who have made it to Japan but were denied asylum, and are now suing the country's Ministry of Justice at Tokyo District Court.
“I submitted reams of documents to Immigration, but they wouldn’t give me the status,” Joude Youssef, the lead plaintiff, told a press conference Tuesday.
He said that all 61 applicants have had years of experience with pro-democracy protests and thus could be vulnerable to reprisals should they return.
Hiroshi Miyauchi, one of the team of lawyers that have taken up the Syrians’ cause, added that all of the plaintiffs would certainly have been granted refugee status in accordance with international standards.
Japan has one of the lowest rates among developed countries -- possibly just bar South Korea -- of granting political asylum.
It accepted less than 50 refugees in the whole of the 1990s, in 2001 it granted the status to 24 people, and in 2013 a grand total of six people -- an approval rate of around 0.1 percent -- made it through the immigration maze.
The 61 Syrians entered the country in 2012. Since then they have been living in Japan on temporary residence permits, which must be extended annually.
If granted asylum, they would be eligible for long-term stay visas, like other foreigners, with privileges such as health insurance and legal right to be employed.
The lawyers for the Syrians contend that in not granting asylum, Japan is violating the 1951 United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees, which Tokyo signed in 1981.
Since that date, 4,882 people have applied for asylum in Japan -- just 410 having their applications approved.
The convention obligates the signatories to give refugees recognition and protection to those with a “well-founded fear of being persecuted in their homeland,” which would appear to apply to the Syrians fleeing the conflict.
A majority of the applicants over the last 34 years have been Kurds fleeing the Middle East, and refugees from Myanmar in Asia.
Geography may have limited some of the refugee influx, since endangered people usually move over land into adjacent territory.
Today, Syria's neighbors Turkey and Jordan host millions of refugees from the conflict. Yet other countries that are even more remote from the world’s trouble spots, such as New Zealand, have also accepted a wealth of refugee applications.
Besides, even nearby countries such as China have numerous people claiming persecution, yet Japan has never granted political asylum to any Chinese.
One such asylum seeker is cartoonist Wang Liming, who claims to have been persecuted for drawing cartoons that lampoon the government and Chinese Communist Party.
Since leaving, he has been denounced in official Chinese media as a “pro-Japan traitor.”
Wang arrived in Japan last year on a three-month business visa, which has since been extended. But when he applied for asylum in Osaka, he was told that Japan did not accept political refugees from China.
He has been advised to try to get a student visa in order to stay – or to try America.
There, he would certainly enjoy greater odds. In 2005, the U.S. granted more than 19,000 applications from the 32,000 submitted.
