Fusae Oshita, National Network in Solidarity with Migrant Workers, Japan Nalini Singh, APWLD Programme Officer

At the 2005 Labour and Migration Task Force annual meeting, the members decided to proactively assist APWLD members who work on the issues of trafficking of women under the broader themes of migration and forced labour in their advocacy and campaign efforts. This article is primarily by Fusae Oshita, a member of National Network in Solidarity with Migrant Workers- a member of the Labour and Migration Task Force- which has been working on this issue for a number of years.

Trafficking, an illegal but highly profitable transport and sale of human beings for the purpose of exploiting their labour, is a global human rights phenomenon involving countless victims each year, including thousands of women trafficked from countries such as Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam into debt bondage in Japan. Despite the issue of trafficking is receiving increased attention, the actual breadth and depth of this issue is still not known. In part, this is because international attention has focused largely on the problem of trafficking of women for prostitution, often with the assumption that all migration into sex work is by definition coercive. However, other definitions acknowledge that men, women, and children are trafficked into a wide variety of labour sectors, including domestic labour, factories, construction, and criminal activity. Estimating the magnitude of trafficking operations is also difficult because of the illegal nature of the activity, and documenting the number of women trafficked can be particularly difficult because the victims often end up in informal-or illegal-labour sectors.

Many women travel (both legally and illegally) to Japan for employment annually. Many are lured or coerced into abusive situations such as being forced to work in the sex trade. Presently, there are more than 150,000 foreign women in prostitution in Japan; over 50 percent are Filipinas and 40 percent are Thais. There are also women from Ukraine, Russia and Sri Lanka among those trafficked to Japan. The trafficking of women into the sex industry in Japan has been a significant problem for many years. Job brokers and employers take advantage and abuse foreign women who are undocumented migrants. These women cannot seek recourse from the police or other law enforcement authorities without risking deportation and potential prosecution, and they are isolated by language barriers, a lack of community, and a lack of familiarity with their surroundings.

Further, Japan’s restrictive visa policies have created extraordinary opportunities for profit for those who facilitate the illegal migration of women into Japan. Criminal syndicates in Japan and abroad have seized upon this opportunity, forming transnational trafficking networks that facilitate women’s migration and then compel them to work under highly exploitative conditions.

The Yakuza (Japanese mafia) is heavily involved in the operation of many of these establishments; bar and brothel owners are often Yakuza members themselves, or else pay protection money to the Yakuza in exchange for assistance both in “disciplining” women who disobey orders or attempt to escape and in evading police and immigration raids.

Filipina Entertainers

Late 1970s and early 1980s saw Filipina women migrate to Japan in large numbers and often falling victim to gross abuses in the process. In 1981, the governments of Japan and the Philippines officially acknowledged the demand for Filipina “entertainers” in Japan, and agreed to facilitate the process of issuing “entertainer visas” to women from the Philippines. Over the course of the next decade, the number of entertainer visas issued to applicants from the Philippines increased from about nine thousand to more than forty thousand per year. The evidence suggests that these visas have improved women’s position vis-a-vis agents, brokers, and employers, making them less vulnerable to abuse and exploitation in the workplace than migrant women who enter Japan on tourist or transit visas. Currently, there are more then 70,000 Filipina entertainers in Japan, one third of them are undocumented.The most obvious problem is that while Filipinas who enter Japan on entertainer visas have the right to work, they are officially classified as “non-workers” and are not protected by Japanese labour laws. Consequently, any appeal for violation of their contracts, which are frequent, must be directed to immigration authorities rather than labour officials.

In most cases because women on “entertainer” visas are not paid any wages until the end of their six month contract (in violation of Japanese labour laws), they are entirely reliant on commissions. How they earn them is not specified by the bar owner, but the practice obviously encourages, if not coerces, the provision of sexual services. Workers’ passports are routinely confiscated upon arrival, at which time women are informed that they are 4-6 million yen in debt. They are housed and overseen at all times by employers, and threats discourage them from trying to leave their employer or the country.

Thai Women in Debt BondageWhile Thai women’s initial decisions to migrate for work are almost always voluntary, women typically are deceived from the time they make their decisions until their arrival in Japan, and most of the women experienced slavery-like abuses, prohibited under international law, during the course of their travel and job placement. Whilst agents in home countries assist in travel arrangements, they routinely deceive women about the terms and conditions of the work they were going to do; and the debt the women will have to pay and the conditions under which they would have to repay it when they arrived in Japan. Many of the women were also deceived about the nature of the work.

Trafficking of women from Thailand into Japan’s sex industry reached large-scale proportions in the late 1980s, and remains an egregious problem. No effort has been made by the Japanese and Thai governments to regularise the migration of Thai women, as in the case of Filipina migrants, even though the evidence suggests that such measures could reduce their vulnerability to abuse. Japanese economic recession in the 1990s, coupled with an increase in the enforcement of immigration law, have had a dampening effect on migration flows, and, according to Japanese government statistics, the number of female Thai “overstayers” has been gradually declining.

Trainee Visa Abuse

Another option available to unskilled migrants seeking work in Japan is the “trainee” visa. According to Immigration Bureau statistics, the number of foreign trainees admitted to Japan quadrupled in the decade following the introduction of these visas in 1982. Trainees enter the country under contract with an employer who is required to provide opportunities for skills development, both through classroom activities and on-the-job training. Again, these labourers are not officially categorised as “workers”, but many employers have taken advantage of the policy by using it to bring over unskilled foreign workers, while providing little or no actual training.

Japanese Government’s Response: Rhetoric without feat

In 2002, Japan signed the UN Convention against Trans-national Organised Crime and the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. Since then, the Japanese government has argued that its existing laws fulfilled its obligations. Yet the enforcement of Japanese law is aimed at protecting society and businesses rather than victims of trafficking. Many of the acts inflicted on trafficked migrants are illegal (confinement, abduction for profit, forced labour and prostitution, rape, offset in debt, to name a few) yet the laws most commonly enforced are in regards to prostitution and illegal immigration.

Prostitution is illegal in Japan and is defined narrowly as “sexual penetration.” This leaves a wide range of sexual services that can be sold legally and more or less openly. Bars and night clubs where many migrants work as hostesses, there is a continuum between strict hostessing and outright prostitution. It is impossible to draw a line between the legal and illegal, the voluntary and the coerced.

The governments involved are well-aware of the abuses trafficked women face and have publicly acknowledged that transnational crime syndicates are involved in trafficking women (especially from Thailand into Japan), that there are currently tens of thousands of undocumented women working in Japan, and that many of these women face extremely exploitative conditions. However, this awareness has not been translated as yet into effective measures to provide women with the means to protect themselves from abuse or to seek redress for violations.

The Japanese government lacks policies designed specifically to respond to trafficking and has yet to aggressively enforce existing laws against forced labour, forced prostitution, illegal confinement, coercive job placement, and other severe abuses committed against trafficked women by traffickers and employers. The government’s response continues to focus on increased efforts to combat illegal migration, targeting both the migrants themselves and those who facilitate such migration. As “illegal aliens” and “prostitutes,” undocumented women working in the Japanese sex industry are viewed as criminals by the authorities. Instead of guaranteeing the safety of trafficked persons and ensuring their access to compensation and redress, the government too often effectively penalises them for abuses that have occurred as a result of their having been trafficked.

When police or immigration officials raid establishments that employ undocumented migrant women, the women are arrested as illegal migrants, detained in immigration facilities, and deported with a five-year ban on re-entering the country. This punitive treatment is applied regardless of the conditions under which the women migrated to, and worked in, Japan. Even when there is clear evidence of trafficking, no effort is made to provide undocumented migrants with an opportunity to seek compensation or justice. If employers or traffickers are prosecuted at all, they are charged with immigration offences, procuring prostitutes in violation of the Prostitution Prevention Law; or with operating an un-licensed entertainment business. They are almost never prosecuted for the severe human rights abuses they have committed. While brokers and snack bar employers were sometimes charged with employing illegal migrants, failing to properly register their business under the Entertainment Businesses Law, or procuring prostitutes for customers, evidence of more serious crimes was rarely investigated.

The trafficked migrants when they are arrested get little sympathy from police, immigration officials, and labour officials, and their access to health care is impeded by Japanese policies that exclude undocumented migrants from health care benefits available to other residents of Japan

There are several laws in Japan that could be used to punish persons who traffic in women, such as the penal code and Japanese “special” laws regarding prostitution, the entertainment industry, labour standards, and immigration. These laws include many provisions that could address the slaverylike practices involved in the recruitment and employment of trafficked women and that could provide compensation to victims. The physical confinement and violent threats that brokers and employers use to control indebted women and many other abuses could be prosecuted under articles of the Penal Code.

Japan’s labour laws could provide an important source of protection from and compensation for the abuses associated with trafficking and debt bondage. However, these laws are not applicable to women victims of trafficking and debt bondage in the Japanese sex industry because of their immigration status and occupation.

Local NGOs responses: Japan Network Against Trafficking in Persons (JNATIP) and National Network in Solidarity with Migrant Workers, etc.

As a first show of solidarity with migrant workers, NGOs have combined their efforts to lobby the Japanese government to enact the law for the protection of victims of trafficking and formed JNATIP in 2003. A growing lobby of Japanese NGOs and advocates is pushing for recognition of the plight of women victims of trafficking in Japan and for assistance for such women through the establishment of shelters, the provision of medical care, and the provision of legal services. The NGOs have contributed significantly to mitigating some of the negative effects of Japanese policies, but can be only of limited effect while those policies remain flawed. These organisations are typically under-funded and can provide only limited services, in limited areas of Japan. These organisations believe that it is still the Japanese government which has the responsibility under international law for protecting the human rights of trafficked persons.

Baan Sabaay“Baan Sabaay

”or House of Wellness is a shelter house for people living with HIV/AIDS set up in Chiangmai in 2002 by two Japanese women. They have been involved in the issue of trafficking in Japan and worked in the HELP (house in emergency of love and peace) Asian Women’s Shelter which provides assistance and support to women in emergency, mainly migrants in Japan who had to escape from situations of violence and exploitation. While working in Japan they helped a lot of women with HIV/AIDS who had to be deported because of their undocumented status as a result of trafficking. They felt the need to follow up with those women after their deportation. So they set up a shelter house in Chiangmai. Baan Sabaay provides bed and food, full financial support for drugs, and vocational training for those in stable condition. It works closely with shelters in Japan to exchange information and to follow up on women who need care after their return to Thailand. As they become known to local people in the Northern Thailand, they extended their support to people regardless of sex and age. Recently they have acquired land in the suburbs of Chiangmai and are building facilities to accommodate people with infectious diseases such as tuberculosis.

Tel/Fax: +66 53 243 547http://homepage3.nifty.com/baansabaay baan_sabaay@yahoo.co.jp

SEPOM: Self-Empowerment Programme for Migrant Women

SEPOM, based in Chiangrai, in the north of Thailand, have been supporting Thai migrant women who returned from Japan with traumatic experiences for five years. Its purpose is to rehabilitate and empower migrant women-returnees and to prevent women in their communities from becoming victims of trafficking. Their projects include conducting research on migration patterns in Chiangrai; vocational training and micro credit scheme; providing legal support, counselling and shelter house. Currently 100 women returnees are involved in SEPOM’s activities. One of its main and successful programmes is assisting children of Thai women from Japanese men by providing scholarship and organising group activities and legal support to obtain citizenship. The self empowerment programmes are coordinated by a Japanese woman who has been working with victims of trafficking both in Japan and Thailand for years and worked with SEPOM from its start. It is also supported by a team of both Japanese and Thai lawyers, psychologists and social workers. While it is not easy for migrant women who returned with traumatic experience to restart their lives in their community because of stigma, diseases including HIV/AIDS, alcoholism caused by depression, poverty and etc., many of them feel encouraged through SEPOM activities and are now setting up their own organisation to continue their work in a more sustainable manner.

Tel/Fax: +66 53 756 411 Sepom2002@yahoo.com