{"id":17013,"date":"2022-06-02T12:58:39","date_gmt":"2022-06-02T19:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=17013"},"modified":"2022-06-03T11:08:41","modified_gmt":"2022-06-03T18:08:41","slug":"japan-today-expose-how-the-media-failed-japans-most-vulnerable-immigrants-feb-22-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=17013","title":{"rendered":"Japan Today expose: How the media failed Japan\u2019s most vulnerable immigrants (Feb 22, 2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Photo courtesy of Japan Today)<\/em><\/p>\n

Hi Blog. \u00a0Since Japan Today has a history of “expiring” its articles (in addition to\u00a0some irresponsible journalistic practices<\/a>) and this one is important enough to warrant public archiving, Debito.org includes its full text below for the record. \u00a0As Japan’s xenophobic and extreme border controls continue to treat foreign outsiders like the plague despite some signs of opening (as we have discussed here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>), officialdom treats foreigners it has incarcerated like animals or worse (as we have discussed here<\/a>). \u00a0What follows is some excellent original reporting on yet another death<\/a> in custody,<\/a>\u00a0and the political ramifications that conspired to maintain the deadly status quo. \u00a0Debito Arudou, Ph.D.<\/p>\n

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Opinions<\/strong>
\nHow the media failed Japan\u2019s most vulnerable immigrants<\/strong>
\nJapan Today, Feb. 22, 2022, By Dreux Richard, courtesy of JDG<\/strong>
\nhttps:\/\/japantoday.com\/category\/features\/opinions\/how-the-media-failed-japans-immigrants?comment-order=popular<\/a>
\nTOKYO
\nThe Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a strange institution. It\u2019s responsible for the way Japan is perceived abroad, and it decides who receives the opportunity to immigrate. But its jurisdiction over the lives of immigrants largely vanishes when they reach Japan. It\u2019s also the most influential agency that does not play a meaningful role in developing the government\u2019s legislative agenda. Senior MoFA officials can only watch in dismay as less prestigious agencies, including some of Japan\u2019s most corrupt, devise legislation that erodes the rights of immigrants and damages Japan\u2019s international reputation.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A proposed overhaul of Japan\u2019s detention system, scuttled in 2021 after the death of detainee Wishma Rathnayake<\/a> and a resulting wave of protests, was especially unpopular with Japanese diplomats. The Kishida administration has revived it anyway, with parliamentary debate anticipated this summer. Until recently, MoFA relied on the press to guard against legislative aggression toward immigrants, quietly passing sensitive information to reporters who covered the Ministry of Justice, which enforces immigration law.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

According to MoFA officials who acted as my sources during the 10 years I covered immigration, their current reluctance to cooperate with journalists is related to the sense, among the agency\u2019s staff, that the media has become \u201cmuch louder, but much less effective\u201d on issues of immigration.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The officials I spoke with traced this problem to 2019, when a detainee starved to death at a detention center in Nagasaki<\/a>, following a four-week hunger strike.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Ministry of Justice cleared the detention center of wrongdoing, issuing a report that contained several defamatory statements about the detainee. He was not, as the ministry\u2019s findings suggested, a hardened criminal or a deadbeat father\u2014not according to court records, not according to his family.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The report went on to claim that it wasn\u2019t possible to return the detainee to Nigeria because he refused to cooperate with the deportation process in January 2019. But the report also documented a meeting in May of 2019 where the detainee begged to be deported. As one MoFA official dryly observed, \u201cMay comes after January.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The death was covered in Japan\u2019s major newspapers, as well as a variety of global outlets. All of them printed the government\u2019s claims without attempting to verify them. Not a single reporter succeeded in confirming the identity of the detainee, a native of southeastern Nigeria who came to Japan 19 years earlier to look for work in the leather tanneries of Hyogo Prefecture. His name was Gerald \u201cSunny\u201d Okafor.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

An important story about the destruction of a family was overlooked. Okafor\u2019s widow, who is deaf, struggled to raise her daughter alone after her husband was detained, pushing her to the brink of psychological collapse. Immigration officials took advantage of her vulnerability, pressuring her to file for divorce and promising\u2014disingenuously\u2014that it would expedite Okafor\u2019s release.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The media also failed to uncover administrative malpractice at the detention center, which led Mr. Okafor to believe that steps were being taken to expedite his return to Nigeria. After learning this wasn\u2019t true, he refused to receive intravenous fluids, precipitating his death. The Nigerian embassy helped the Ministry of Justice cover up these mistakes, leaving a paper trail in Okafor\u2019s immigration file.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The success of this cover-up has undermined the best opportunity to sink the proposed immigration reforms, which were developed in response to Okafor\u2019s death. The reforms are based on the insulting notion that the detention center could have saved Okafor if it had possessed greater powers of coercion\u2014the power to sanction his attorneys, for instance, if they pushed too aggressively for their client\u2019s release.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But the press has helped to turn Okafor\u2019s death into a non-story, by disseminating state propaganda that diminishes the death\u2019s significance, then responding to that propaganda with opinion essays instead of investigations.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe media approaches the immigration debate as an ideological matter, rather than a test of the integrity of Japan\u2019s institutions,\u201d observed one MoFA official who monitored Mr. Okafor\u2019s case. \u201cThat\u2019s not helpful to people in government who are trying to fix the system, because it doesn\u2019t change anybody\u2019s mind. It only inflames existing disagreements.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If disobeying the instructions of immigration officials becomes a criminal offense, as the government has now proposed, it will be made possible by the collapse of non-partisan relationships between trustworthy elements of Japan\u2019s government and their counterparts in the press.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mr. Okafor’s body shortly after his death. “Japan never saw what starvation did to that man. It should haunt them,” said Stanley Egbogota, chairman of an Igbo civic association that raised money for Mr. Okafor’s family. <\/em><\/strong>Photo: With permission from the family of Gerald Okafor<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nIn an era of journalism where editorial decisions are shaped by web traffic and algorithms, the loss of knowledgeable sources may not strike every media professional as a matter of concern. Reporters didn\u2019t need to speak with anyone who knew Mr. Okafor in order to write about him, or to decide that it was no longer necessary to write about him \u2014 even as parliament debated legislation that resulted from his death.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThey got the answers they needed,\u201d Okafor\u2019s widow observed in our most recent correspondence. \u201cAnd in such a convenient way: from no one, from nowhere.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

=======================<\/p>\n

For six years, Dreux Richard covered Japan\u2019s Nigerian community for a daily newspaper in Tokyo. His first book, Every Human Intention: Japan in the New Century, was published by Pantheon in 2021.<\/em><\/strong> ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JT: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a strange institution. It\u2019s responsible for the way Japan is perceived abroad, and it decides who receives the opportunity to immigrate. But its jurisdiction over the lives of immigrants largely vanishes when they reach Japan. It\u2019s also the most influential agency that does not play a meaningful role in developing the government\u2019s legislative agenda. Senior MoFA officials can only watch in dismay as less prestigious agencies, including some of Japan\u2019s most corrupt, devise legislation that erodes the rights of immigrants and damages Japan\u2019s international reputation.<\/p>\n

A proposed overhaul of Japan\u2019s detention system, scuttled in 2021 after the death of detainee Wishma Rathnayake and a resulting wave of protests, was especially unpopular with Japanese diplomats. The Kishida administration has revived it anyway, with parliamentary debate anticipated this summer. Until recently, MoFA relied on the press to guard against legislative aggression toward immigrants, quietly passing sensitive information to reporters who covered the Ministry of Justice, which enforces immigration law.<\/p>\n

According to MoFA officials who acted as my sources during the 10 years I covered immigration, their current reluctance to cooperate with journalists is related to the sense, among the agency\u2019s staff, that the media has become \u201cmuch louder, but much less effective\u201d on issues of immigration.<\/p>\n

The officials I spoke with traced this problem to 2019, when a detainee starved to death at a detention center in Nagasaki, following a four-week hunger strike, named Gerald “Sunny” Okafor… Meanwhile, the press has helped to turn Okafor\u2019s death into a non-story, by disseminating state propaganda that diminishes the death\u2019s significance, then responding to that propaganda with opinion essays instead of investigations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,54,36,22,5,12,4,10,13,60,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embedded-racism","category-pinprick-protests","category-bad-social-science","category-cultural-issue","category-human-rights","category-immigration-assimilation","category-japanese-government","category-japanese-policeforeign-crime","category-media","category-nj-voices-ignored","category-problematic-foreign-treatment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17013"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17065,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17013\/revisions\/17065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}