Foreign nationals entering and residing in Japan are now
required to have their fingerprints and photographs taken by the Japanese
government.
This new program is part of Japan’s own fight against
terrorism, and the data it receives is cross-linked in international terrorist
databases, as well as the country’s own blacklists.
On its first day of operation, the program netted five foreigners;
their biometric data matched entries in a blacklist of over 800,000 foreign
nationals who have somehow earned the ire of the Japanese government. Reports
indicate that at least two of the people under investigation were foreign
nationals from the Phillipines and China, and had been deported from Japan on prior occasions.
The remaining three’s details were not disclosed, although
Japanese Foreign Ministry officials said that they are being held in cells
within Narita International Airport and will likely be deported as well. A
different report that appeared in the Japanese-language version of MSN (original
Japanese, translated) indicates
three out of the five may have been caught for having producing “altered or falsified
passports,” – an offense that may not be related to the fingerprinting system at all, which has caused some to call the true effectiveness of the program into question.
The fingerprinting program has generated a firestorm of
controversy, and the Japanese government stands accused of taking an
anti-foreigner stance. Protestors, gathering last Tuesday outside the foreign
ministry building in Tokyo, Japan, shouted
chants and called the government “racist” and “xenophobic,” among other
things.
Sonoko Kawakami, serving as the campaign coordinator for
Amnesty International Japan and organizer for the Tuesday protests, said that the
fingerprinting program is “an expression of Japanese xenophobia. Japan is using
this system as a tool to control foreigners,” and noted that “for the past few
years, the government has been associating foreigners with things like crime
and terrorism.”
A similar, previous fingerprinting program in Japan was
scuttled in 2000 over concerns about privacy and the preservation of human
rights. “This system is ostensibly an anti-terrorism measure, but … only
applying the system to foreigners shows a lack of consideration for foreigners'
human rights. Even though the system of fingerprinting foreigners was
completely abolished in April 2000, it's infuriating that the Japanese
government has reinstated this … entry inspection system,” said Lim Young-Ki, a
representative for the Korean Youth Association in Japan.
Catherine Campbell of the National Union of General Workers
Nanbu, an organization that includes many foreigners, agreed with Lim and noted
that the program is a “big step backward and I really think it's sad.”
