KurdistanObserver.com

Kurds' Bid For Asylum Thrown Out Of Court

The Japan Times: Feb. 26, 2005
By MASAMI ITO
Staff writer

The Tokyo District Court on Friday dismissed all four lawsuits filed by Kurdish asylum-seekers to revoke a Justice Ministry decision to deny them refugee status.

Presiding Judge Hiroyuki Kanno said that although severe persecution toward Kurds did exist historically, the plaintiffs do not conform to the definition of refugees stated in the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

In a written statement, Kanno said public security in Turkey began to stabilize in the 1990s with the rapid spread of democracy, "and the revision of the Constitution in 2001 further clarified people's rights to freedom of thought, belief and expression."

Takeshi Ohashi, the plaintiffs' lawyer, told a news conference after the ruling, "Unfortunately, the only two (parties) I know of who think (that Kurdish issues no longer exist in Turkey) are the Justice Ministry and Turkey authorities."

He gave an example of a 2003 report by the U.S. State Department that says that anyone who said they were Kurdish asylum-seekers for personal or political reasons faced possible persecution.

"I have no idea how (the judges) came to the conclusion that there has been no fear of torture and abuse since the 1990s," Ohashi said. "It seems to me that (the judges) just bought the opinion of the Justice Ministry."

Of the four asylum-seekers, two also had been suing to revoke their deportation orders. Those efforts were also dismissed.

"I believe that (the Immigration Bureau) will now use this ruling as an excuse to detain the two," Ohashi said.

He said that if they appealed to the high court, he hoped the Immigration Bureau would take into consideration that the asylum-seekers were still in the middle of a legal battle in Japan and not detain them.

Erdal Dogan, 31, is one of the Kurdish asylum-seekers who has been issued a deportation order. The Dogans, a family of five, including two small children, and another Kurdish family staged a two-month protest sit-in outside United Nations University in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, last summer.

At the news conference, Dogan expressed his disappointment.

"More than 300 Kurds have applied for refugee status in Japan, and to this day, not one has been recognized," he said. "What the Japanese government is doing is terrible.

"The only reason none of us has been given refugee status is because of the commercial relation between Turkey and Japan."

Dogan arrived in Japan in 1999 and his application for refugee recognition was denied in 2000. He filed this lawsuit in 2002. Later that year, a deportation order was issued.

Dogan said, "We are humans and our lives are not cheap."

He said he fears persecution for ethic and religious reasons if he is deported.

Another one of the asylum-seekers, whose name was withheld, had been detained and tortured by Turkish military officials in the 1990s, Ohashi said. The man had been denied refugee status twice, but after the second refusal, he was given a special residence permit.