opinion

Recently, an incident occurred in which leaflets despising Vietnamese technical trainees were openly put up in their working place in Japan.

The Vietnamese technical trainees reported that they had received discriminatory treatment constantly.

Such an act of excluding foreigners is very serious in Japan.

The exploitation of labour against foreign workers is rampant in it under the signboard of the “technical training system of foreigner”, bringing on criticism from the international community more often than not.  

The Japanese government set up a “technical training system of foreigners” as a measure to counter the decrease in manpower caused by the falling birthrate and ageing of population at home and exploits foreign workers under the cloak of it.

The system was established for the purpose of admitting foreigners to the relevant businesses to train them and promote international cooperation by making it possible to transfer technology to their countries through them. Ostensibly it looks fine as it makes an “international contribution”, but in truth, it is a xenophobic system rife with all kinds of discriminations. 

Human rights violations have become a commonplace for foreign workers in Japan. They are subjected to overtime work for over 100 hours every month, driven to dangerous work with no safety measures and fired unreasonably without health check-ups and payments for they did if they are ill.

In 2022, a video showing a foreign worker who had suffered mental and physical maltreatment for two years in a Japanese construction company was posted on the Internet, sparking public criticism.

The Vietnamese worker was employed as a foreign technical trainee in a Japanese construction company with a foolish thought that he could earn some money if he went to work in Japan. In the period he suffered severe maltreatment and abuses and was so heavily assaulted that he was seriously wounded with his ribs fractured and teeth broken and committed to the hospital.

Japan accepted the UN Charter in December 1956 and signed the International Human Rights Protocol in the late 1970s. So it is clearly bound by international law to do away with national chauvinism. 

However, Japan blatantly violates it and persists in maltreatment and discriminations against foreign workers.

The continued human rights violations and discriminations against foreigners in Japan are the consequences of the inhumane misrule of the Japanese government, which styles itself an “advanced state in human rights situation” in spite of its serious domestic issues of vice and immorality.

Shortly ago, the final report of a surveying visit to Japan on “Office work and human rights” in Japan was presented to the UN Human Rights Council that met in Geneva. 

Expressing concern over the discriminatory treatment of foreign workers in the work places, the report stressed the need for the Japanese government and businesses to accelerate the response. 

The wretchedly poor human rights situation of today in Japan is the outcome of its deeply ingrained national chauvinism of inciting the superiority of the so-called Yamato nation while excluding and looking down on other nations and the crafty and narrow-minded thinking of kowtowing to the strong and treating impolitely and oppressing the weak.

The Japanese authorities would be well-advised to no longer go against the elementary ethics and morality which should value goodwill and promote harmony and equality, but immediately stop human rights violations against foreigners.