The ruling coalition is rushing a bill to revise the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law through the Diet.

Its hastiness raises doubts whether the government and the ruling parties consider foreign nationals living in this country as people who have the right to have their dignity respected and protected.

The ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and its junior partner, Komeito, is seeking to have the Lower House Judicial Affairs Committee vote on the bill as soon as possible.

The ruling camp must not be allowed to wind up deliberations on the proposal without addressing all the serious flaws in Japan’s regulations concerning detention and deportation of illegal immigrants.

The immigration control authority’s sensitivity to human rights was called into question by the March death of Wishma Sandamali, a 33-year-old Sri Lankan woman detained at a facility operated by the Nagoya Regional Immigration Services Bureau, and its responses to the tragedy.

She was detained at the facility in August 2020 for overstaying her student visa after dropping out of school due to her inability to pay the fees. Her health deteriorated after she was detained.

An interim report on the case was released on April 9 by the Justice Ministry’s Immigration Services Agency of Japan. But it came to light during Diet deliberations on the bill that the report omitted the fact that a psychiatrist worried about her health recommended that the agency grant her provisional release.

Her detention was prompted by her consultation with police over violence she suffered from a Sri Lankan man she lived with. But the immigration authorities failed to deal with the case according to the procedures for handling victims of domestic violence.

Opposition parties are demanding the release of the agency’s video recording showing how her health worsened. But Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa has rejected the demand, citing “security reasons.”

She has promised that the ministry will work with outside experts to produce a final report on the case, but has refused to disclose the names of the experts. This outrageously anachronistic approach makes it impossible to evaluate the objectivity and fairness of the report.

The bill to amend the law was drafted in response to a case in which a Nigerian man starved to death in 2019 during a hunger strike he staged in protest against his prolonged detention. An investigation into the case also exposed the poor quality of health care provided for immigration detainees.

As measures to tackle the problem of prolonged immigration detention, the government-drafted bill would revise the current provision that foreign nationals cannot be deported while they are applying for refugee status. The proposed revision will make it possible for them to be deported during their third application onward on the same grounds.

The revision would also usher in a program to allow asylum seekers to remain in Japan under the supervision of relatives or supporters instead of being detained.

This option appears to be a step forward, but immigration authorities would have total discretion on whether to apply this program to specific cases and there is no limit on the duration of detention. These structural problems would remain unaddressed.

The proposed revision has been criticized by a United Nations agency and other international bodies for failing to elevate Japan’s system to handle asylum claims to international standards, but the government remains unfazed.

Since 2007, a total of 17 foreign nationals have died during immigration detention. Some of these deaths may have been prevented if there had been the opposition-proposed system under which courts would decide whether foreign nationals suspected of visa violations or other offenses should be detained or kept in detention for a longer period.

This viewpoint should be taken into account in a wholesale review of the system and the bill.

Opposition to the bill has spread from a small number of people, such as members of organizations supporting detained foreigners and lawyers, to the broader public through social media as its flaws have come to be recognized.

The government and the ruling parties should pay serious attention to the growing chorus of calls for reform of the system to build a society where members respect each other as equal human beings.

--The Asahi Shimbun, May 14