Japan: Asylum Seeker Dies at Detention Center While Doctor at Lunch

An asylum-seeker collapsed and died after staff at a Japanese immigration center failed to call for a medic, allegedly because the doctor was having lunch, a pressure group said Thursday.

Anwar Hussin, a member of Myanmar’s Rohingya ethnic group, fell ill shortly after he was detained on Oct 9, according to People’s Forum on Burma, a Japan-based NGO headed by a Japanese lawyer.

Citing the 57-year-old’s cousin, the group said Hussin had been complaining of a headache all morning and fell unconscious as he began eating lunch in his cell.

Fellow detainees—seven people of different nationalities—called for help because he was vomiting and having spasms, the NGO said.

Detention center staff rejected their requests that a doctor be called, saying Hussin was just “having a seizure” and that the duty medic was on his lunch break, the group said, citing detainees who had spoken to the dead man’s cousin.

A doctor was summoned 51 minutes after Hussin’s collapse, according to a timeline given to his cousin by the center.

Japan has a horrible human rights record in adjudicating the applications for those who seek asylum.     

Despite being the third largest donor in the world to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Japan admits only a tiny number of asylum seekers compared to other industrialized nations, and often appears reluctant to grant refugee status to those who do come. Damning statistics are bandied about, such as the fact that the country has accepted just 508 refugees from the 7,297 applications made since 1982.

The 2011 statistics concerning asylum application were released on 24 February 2012 by theImmigration Bureau* of the Ministry of Justice of Japan. According to the report ‘The number of recognised refugees, etc. in 2011’ (‘Heisei 23 nen ni okeru Nanmin Ninteishasuu tou ni tsuite)’, 2999 decisions were made (2119 on 1st instance and 880 on appeal), among which 21 applicants were granted recognition (seven on 1st instance and 14 on appeal). An additional 248 people were granted leave to stay on humanitarian grounds. Japan, signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention since 1981, has been known for its restrictive asylum system, and last year proved to be no deviation from the trend, with a shocking 0.7 percent recognition rate.

The number of applications and appeal applications was the highest in Japan’s asylum history: 1867 applications and 1719 appeal applications were filed in 2011, respectively 665 and 860 more than the previous year. The main cause of the increase was the rising number of re-applications, which accounted for 540 out of 1867. It is inferred that the efforts of the Immigration Bureau to speed up the refugee status determination process, aiming to curtail the waiting time, simply resulted in an increase in the number of rejected asylum seekers, who then chose to re-apply. In principle, re-application can be submitted as long as a failed asylum seeker can add a new asylum claim or new evidence on their initial application.