Presentations with Panel Discussion
Date: July 24, 6:30- 8:00
Place: Sophia University, Yotsuya Campus, Sophia Tower (bldg. 6), room 305


The current hunger strike at the Higashi-Nihon Immigration Center recently surpassed day 50 in one of the largest and longest of such protests in the history of Japanese detention. Although hunger strikes have been a constant in the history of detainees' struggle for their rights in Japan, seldom if ever have they been as life-threatening as now. There are currently more than 1500 foreigners in six main detention centers in Japan, including many asylum seekers sent straight into detention from Narita airport and many picked up for minor violations of their provisional release. Neither these hunger strikes nor other news around detainee problems have gained much media attention. Why are these detainees risking their lives in protest?



This event will provide context to these strikes through a review of the conditions at the detention centers, and some of the legal quandaries and human rights abuses of detainees in Japan. We will include some of the detainees' voices through art and video interview, and then discuss some of the advocacy efforts underway, including some by student groups.



PROGRAM



FEATURED SPEAKER: Activist Tanaka Kimiko, the founder of the NGO Ushiku no Kai--a group that advocates for foreign detainee rights--will discuss the current state of affairs at the detention centers in Japan, with particular attention to the situation at Higashi-Nihon Immigration Center (in Ushiku, Ibaraki) as well as the branch detention facility in Shinagawa (Tokyo), which presently holds the most detainees in the country.


DETAINEES' VOICES
Miriam Wattles (UCSB) will highlight artistic communication coming out of Ushiku: political cartoons of protest by two Iranians, and evocative pencil drawings by a Chilean.


David Slater (Sophia U.,) will show video clips from the "Refugee Voices Japan Project" of ex-detainees talking about the hardship of detention at Shinagawa.


SUPPORT EFFORTS: Rosa Barbaran (from Sophia Refugee Support Group--SRSG--who works in Shinagawa) will describe their support efforts, and outline what else can be done.


LANGUAGE: English with translation of Japanese. English and Japanese questions and discussion welcome.


Free and open to all; no registration necessary


Presentations will be brief in order to allow ample discussion afterwards. Both those well-versed and those wanting to learn more about detention center issues are welcome to join us in this workshop-style gathering.


SPEAKERS' BIOS
Tanaka Kimiko 田中喜美子, has led the grassroots NGO Ushiku no Kai (牛久の会, or 牛久入管収容所問題を考える会) for 25 years. She supports the Ushiku detainees through weekly visits and serves as their spokesperson to the Immigration Bureau. She also lectures and publishes articles calling for the human rights of foreign detainees regularly and is commonly cited as an expert on the issues by the press. On the six days a week she is not at Ushiku Detention Center, she runs a restaurant in Tsukuba city.


Miriam Wattles, member of Ushiku no Kai since September 2018, is Associate Professor in the department of the History of Art and Architecture at U.C. Santa Barbara. Drawn to intersections between social history and artistic expression, her recent research foci include early twentieth century manga, emotional history, and textiles. Her collaboratively written article with Tanaka Kimiko giving background on the issues to be discussed at this event came out in the March 1, 2019 of the Asia Pacific Journal: https://apjjf.org/2019/05/Tanaka.html


David H. Slater is a Professor of cultural anthropology at Sophia University, Faculty of Liberal Arts. He works on issues of youth and labor, social class and inequality, and disaster and recovery of the 311 disasters. 2 years ago, he started "Refugee Voices Japan Project," doing ethnography and collecting oral narrative accounts from refugee asylum seekers.


Rosa Barbaran is a Peruvian-Japanese student at Sophia University, working on immigrants and refugees, and one of the founders of Sophia Refugee Support Group.