I. Introduction
During this year, I’ve researched two issues affecting foreign people in Japan. I focused on health issues for foreign people first, both for foreign residents and also for asylum seekers living in detention centres in Japan. I then focused more on situation of people in the detention centres.
I chose these topics for several reasons. Firstly, since wars are occurring especially in Middle East, every county has to ponder what should it be like and what it should do to change this bad situation. People are escaping, fleeing and even being killed. A huge number of people have become asylum seekers and refugees. They lost their lovely homes. I thought that though the world is experiencing these terrible conditions, Japanese society doesn't care much about it. The media is indifferent to refugees and the people are ignorant of wars because the problems are FAR from us. I strongly state that we young students must take these issues willingly then, make the problem into the spotlight in our society.Secondly, I live in Edogawa-ward where a lot of migrants also live, so I’ve been interested in such issues like migrants staying illegally/without documents. Above all, I have been to Australia to research migrants’ situation. In that experience, I found there is little difference between Australia and Japan. The Australian current situation was not what I had been expected. Both of them look down on migrants as tools working. I was shocked at the fact and also I felt that I must keep researching this field. II. Health Care for Foreigners in Japan
As the first step of my research in this year, I focused on health care of foreign people. Japanese citizens have medical insurance in a national medical insurance scheme (国民皆保険). It is not widely known, however, that foreign people can also have this national insurance. If you have this insurance, 70% of the cost of operations, medicine, medical care, examinations and so on are covered. Everyone in Japan must take this insurance and for foreigners, foreigner registration is necessary to get that. By Until the 1990s, you had to stay in Japan for over a year to register. But in this system, for example, a foreign student staying just a year wasn’t able to get the insurance. And now, since 2012, the criteria was changed: if you stay in Japan over 3 months, you can get the insurance. The term was made shorter, but the medical situation didn’t get much better. It is estimated that over 100,000 foreign people don’t join this because, for example, there is misunderstanding it is only for Japanese. Even a large proportion of Japanese people have the same misunderstanding. Through my research, I felt that a promotion movement to let the people who really need the insurance know is not done enough.
In the case of the detention centre, the health condition seems bad. According to a doctor who sometimes goes to the detention center, they receive poor medical care, and some are suffering serious illness like Gastritis, Duodenal Ulcer, Hypertension, and Herniated disks during their detention. This is mainly because they are not allowed to move around freely. (I will explain in detail the conditions in detention centres later in this essay). Thus they are likely to have these illnesses. Moreover, it is difficult for detainees to get medical care unless they get out of the detention. The number of doctors is very few and the environment of medical care is poor. I don't think human being should be treated like this. There is much room to improve this current situation, let the Japanese people know the existence of the detention, and, their human rights may be on better direction.
III. Conditions in Detention Centres
In the second semester, I also researched about the situation in a detention centre. There is a detention centre in Ushiku, Ibaraki prefecture. As a field work, I visited this place and saw the detainees. Thanks to Tanaka-san, who belongs to Ushiku-no-kai, I could see and feel what the detention was like. Tanaka-san is a very powerful woman, and she's doing volunteer work as she runs a restaurant. The detention is a place to which people who wasn't able to get the permission to stay in Japan or overstayed their visas are sent. This is the only detention in East Japan and belongs to the Ministry of Justice. Before getting there, I had expected that the detention was like a prison, and the atmosphere would be such dark. This journey is a little bit tough because the detention is far away from Tokyo, especially from Chuo. It takes about 2 hours from the university, and costs you about 4000 yen. The bus fee is the most annoying thing but there are only about 5 buses coming in a day, moreover, the fee in one way to the detention is 480yen.This is surprising. I firstly thought this was too rural...maybe the first problem showed up here.
I talked with 2 people in menkaishitu/interview room (面会室) in which you are separated from the detainees by the glass. One man is from Turkey and the other man is from Sri Lanka. The Turkish man wasn't able to speak Japanese or English so much, and we, mainly Tanaka-san used physical language which was kind of fun to see and had a difficulty to communicate with him. He is a Kurdish person from Turkey. He was more cheerful than I had expected. I had thought the detainees were depressed so much. He was waiting for provisional release, however, and it seemed it took so much time to achieve, and was difficult to get. Although the situation he's in was not so good, he looked he still had hope.
The other man I talked with is from Sri Lanka, so he was capable of speaking English. Then we had a smooth conversation. He was very pleasant to meet us because he had no one to come and talk with. His family is in his home country, he said. He kindly explained to us what it was like in his country. Of course he seemed he loved his home. I couldn't ask him directly why he was in the detention, but though the talking, I guess, he was an overstayer.
The guards in clothes look like firefighters' I met there seemed pretty I thought. Nevertheless the man from Sri Lanka said some are kind, and some are not. I heard that the food supplied to the detainees tasted terrible. I think it is natural because it's offered for free. In the detention, unlike prisons, there is a tiny store so that the detainees can buy commodities if they have money. And this produces some gap between ones who have money and don't. It is allowed to give something if it checked and passed. Not anything is okay. Just only powder stuff like sugar, soup, and so on are allowed to give them. It is also allowed to give money to the detainees, thus, the gap of wealth is produced in the detention centre unlike prisons.
It is not good to just make the atmosphere comfortable to live in the detention because most of the detainees broke Japanese law and they are made to stay there. Yet, what I think is, they are humans just like us. It is terrible that little treatment is done for sick detainees and detainees are only allowed to exercise for 20 minutes per a day. Other than this time, they have to stay still in a small room. In that regulation, it is natural that the detainees should get some illness. It can’t be human life. This must be changed.
IV. References
The Japan Times, 16 Nov 2004, Doctor Hits Immigration Center Health Care