opinion

Recently, Japan decided to enforce the newly revised "law on immigration control and recognition of refugees" across the country on the pretext of strictly controlling illegal residence of foreigners.

It has sparked growing anxiety and concern among refugees from other countries who are now staying in Japan.

An Islamic ethnic minority man from Myanmar expressed his anger, saying the revised law of Japan "is the one that does not protect lives". He said that he came to Japan in 2006 and applied for refugee three times but all of them were rejected, deploring that if he is forcibly repatriated, his personal safety would not be guaranteed.

A man who came to Japan from Cameroon in 2012 said that "application for refugee is one of human rights," expressing his indignation at the fact that he was suffering mental anguish in the immigration control facility like prison for two years. "All men are equal and we mustn’t be treated like animal," he protested.

Originally, Japan is a country with deep-rooted national chauvinism.

A typical example is its repression of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon), an overseas Koreans' organization of the DPRK.

From the historical point of view, Koreans in Japan are the direct victims, who were forcibly drafted into Japan by the colonial policy of the Japanese imperialists during their military occupation of Korea in the past century (1905-1945), and their descendants. Therefore, it is the state responsibility and legal and moral obligation of Japan to ensure their national rights.

But the Japanese authorities are discriminating against Koreans in Japan and even persistently repressing the national education of Korean children.

They did not allow Korean schools to be built in the initial days of their establishment, but closed and confiscated them. Since Chongryon, a legitimate overseas compatriots' organization of the DPRK, was organized, they have clamped down on the national education of Chongryon overtly and covertly on the pretext of the “law on foreign schools”.

They set ultra-right gangsters on to commit murder, arson and group violence against Korean schools and children of Koreans in Japan. They are especially hell-bent on "chima and jogori hunting" against schoolgirls of Korean schools wearing the traditional Korean women’s costume.

The repression of Chongryon and human rights abuses against Koreans in Japan by the Japanese authorities are very mean and persistent. To cite a few examples, they excluded kindergartens of Korean schools from the free infant education and upbringing system, the Saitama City authorities cut out only the kindergarten of Saitama Korean Primary and Middle School as they supplied masks to nurseries and kindergartens in the city to cope with the expansion of COVID-19 cases and the Japanese authorities counted out Korea University of Chongryon as they enforced the "emergency measure for payment for student support".

A Japanese proverb says that snakes die of their venom.

Misanthropy peculiar to Japan which was revealed again by the extreme exclusion of other nations will turn even Japanese society into an animal society bereft of love and affection, where the law of the jungle prevails.