Urgent Action for a Kurdish Family in Need
May
9, 2003
Dear Friends,
A Kurdish activist alerted us to
the following news stories in the Japan Times, today. A Kurdish family is
in need of help in Japan. We wrote the following letter to Ambassador
Ryozo Kato of Japan to the United States in Washington, DC. Please
consider doing something similar. In addition to an email, or a facsimile
message, you might also consider making a phone call to register your
request. As always, we thank you for your interest in Kurds and Kurdistan.
With best wishes,
From all of us at AKIN
__________________________________
The Honorable Ryozo Kato
The Embassy of Japan
2520 Massachusetts Avenue
Washington, DC 20008
Dear Ambassador Kato,
I am writing to request that you
look into the deplorable stories of Meryem Dogan, Erdal Dogan and their two
children Merve and Mehmet Serxwebun in the on the line editions of the Japan
Times dated April 29, 2003 and March 25,2003.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20030429zg.htm
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20030325a2.htm
This Kurdish family of four is in
need of protection rather than imprisonment in the case of Mr. Erdal Dogan, now
coupled with a hunger strike, and misery in the case of Mrs. Meryem Dogan and
her two children.
Unmentioned in the articles are the
appalling human rights conditions of the Kurdish minority in Turkey where the
Kurds are even banned from speaking their language. This state sanctioned
violence has brought Turkey the charges of engaging in slow motion genocide
against the Kurds and forced members of this mistreated population to seek
refuge in places as far away as Japan. Please see to it that your
government extends a welcoming mat to this Kurdish family. I look forward
to hearing from you.
I remain truly yours,
Name and address
The coordinates of the Embassy of
Japan
Email: eojjicc@erols.com
Telephone: 202.238.6700
Fax: 202.328.2187
The Embassy of Japan URL address:
http://www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/
THE ZEIT GIST
Refugees Treated Like Criminals
Japan Times Readers Help Kurdish Family
By DAVID MCNEILL
The Japan Times
April 29, 2003
FOR ONLINE VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20030429zg.htm
Last month, these pages carried the
story of a Kurdish family that came to Japan seeking asylum, only to be torn
apart by the country's arcane immigration laws.
Meryem Dogan, with her two
children, waits to see her husband, Kurdish refugee Erdal (inset), who is
currently on hunger strike at Ushiku detention center.
The experience of Erdal Dogan, his
wife Meryem and their two small children, suggested a system that was failing
badly to deal with the growing refugee problem.
Erdal has been held with his
brother Deniz in a center for illegal immigrants and visa overstayers for
months, leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves with the help of
an over-stretched support sector.
Since the article went to press,
there is good and bad news to report on the status of Erdal and his family. A
number of Japan Times readers have sent much-needed clothes and food to Meryem
and her children, while some readers have helped to pay the family's utility
bills, assistance for which Meryem is "truly thankful." The Foreign
Office-related Refugee Assistance H.Q. is also helping with day-to-day
expenses.
Moreover, the article has persuaded
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Tokyo to take another look
at Erdal's application for U.N. recognition of his case.
However, Erdal himself remains in
the care of the East Japan Immigration Center in Ushiku, Ibaraki Prefecture,
forced to wear prison clothes and apply for written permission to hug his
children.
And in March, after his application
for temporary release was rejected, Erdal and Deniz decided to hunger strike.
Erdal is one of hundreds of asylum
seekers incarcerated in crowded cells for up to 18 months while their case
files bounce between dusty bureaucratic offices.
Erdal's compatriots get a
particularly raw deal. Of over 300 Turkish Kurds who have applied for refugee
status since 1998, not one has been accepted. Tokyo's zero tolerance for
Kurdish asylum seekers compares poorly with the 19 percent acceptance rate (in
2001) of Germany, 33 percent forSwitzerland and 77 percent for Canada. Even
stingy Britain, at 3 percent, is more open.
When I saw Erdal on April 21, he
had been without food for almost a month and his weight had dropped from a
stocky 85 kg to just 69 kg.
Talking from behind a glass screen
and with a guard at his side, Erdal said he was suffering from constant
headaches and was having difficulty keeping down water because his stomach had
started to close.
But why hunger strike?
"Because there is no other
way. All we did is apply for refugee status and they put us in prison. The
whole world accepts Kurdish refugees but in more than eight years this country
has never accepted one of us."
Was there any reaction from the
authorities?
"Nobody has come at all, even
though we told the government before we started. The doctors and guards inside
of course want me to give up because I'm causing them trouble, but nobody wants
to understand the problem."
How far will he go?
"I'm not going to stop until
they accept that we have a right to be treated with dignity and if they refuse,
then I'll continue to the end.
"I won't accept if they try to
force feed me. They have to negotiate." Meryem is worried sick but agrees
"there is no other way."
Both the Ministry of Justice and
the Ushiku authorities declined to comment on the case, citing "privacy
issues."
Erdal's lawyer, Takeshi Ohashi,
says the situation is at a very dangerous point. "His body has weakened
considerably, and his headaches are worrying, but our own doctors can't check
him because the glass partition prevents a proper examination. He's very
worried about his family, which is weakening him mentally, and he has banged
his head against the cell walls in frustration on a couple of occasions."
Ohashi says that while the
"terrible" position of his family marks Erdal's case out, his
situation in the detention center is "not unusual at all."
"There are so many people who
have been locked up like this since the refugee problem started to grow, and
the new immigration law (currently being pushed through the Diet) will make
things no better at all, because it will still mean people like Erdal being
placed in detention centers while their cases are pending."
Is anyone else helping?
"The U.N. in Japan is doing
its best but it doesn't have enough people. It's doing the job that the
government is supposed to be doing" -- sorting out asylum claims.
Diego Rosero of the UNHCR in Tokyo
admits that it is struggling to deal with the scale of the problem but says the
situation in Japan is changing, slowly.
"We are seeing quite a few
judges at local levels breaking ranks on asylum cases to criticize government
policy and that's a good sign, but we have some way to go here.
"In the meantime, refugees
should be treated decently and have their human rights respected while their
claims are being processed."
There is little of that in Ushiku,
where Erdal, his brother and their fellow Kurd Yilmaz Hasan, who has been
inside for 14 months, fight a lonely battle for release.
"We just want the Japanese
people to understand that the immigration rules here are illegal and that the
authorities have no right to treat us like criminals," says Erdal.
"We're just ordinary people
like you."
Family At Risk as Dad Locked Up
By DAVID MCNEILL
The Japan Times
March 25, 2003
FOR ONLINE VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20030325a2.htm
In a dingy apartment in Kawaguchi,
Saitama, Turkish Kurd Meryem Kosal and her children Merve, 4, and Mehmet
Serxwabun, 12 months, wait for their father Erdal to come home.
Meryem Kosal and her children Merve
and Mehmet.
Erdal has been locked up in a
detention center for illegal immigrants and visa overstayers in Ibaraki
Prefecture for the past three months.
Meryem says they were managing to
scratch out a life for themselves in Japan, where Erdal worked as a demolition
laborer on day-wages, until the authorities told them their asylum applications
had been rejected and took them both into custody.
"We had left the children with
friends before we went to the immigration center and when they heard what
happened they brought the children to the center to tell us they couldn't look
after them while we were locked up. So I was released."
Her husband has been in Japan since
January 1999 after he fled what she says was persecution for his political
activities as a Kurdish activist.
She says he came to Japan because
of its visa exemption agreement with Turkey.
Since her husband's incarceration,
Meryem has relied on the help of her few friends as well as Japanese aid
agencies, but she and her children are living very close to the edge. Unpaid
electricity, gas and water bills have piled up.
The only words of Japanese she
speaks are "onegaeshimasu" and "arigato," which she uses to
plead with utility workers who come to cut off her supplies. Rent for the
apartment is three months in arrears.
A spokesperson for the Immigration
Bureau said that the bureau has no system for supporting families in cases like
this, adding that it expects nonprofit organizations or local governments to
take up the slack. Meryem says she got some help from volunteer refugee
agencies but it has dried up.
In the meantime, she tries to visit
her husband once a month. More is impossible because he is so far away.