In Japan, justice stalled in brutal death of deportee

Abubakar Awudu Suraj

Source: Japan Times

By Sumie Kawakami and David McNeill

Abubakar Awudu Suraj had been in Japan for over two decades when immigration authorities detained him in May 2009. The Ghanaian was told in Yokohama of his deportation to Ghana at 9:15 a.m. on March 22 last year. Six hours later he was dead, allegedly after being excessively restrained by guards.

Jimmy Mubenga also died last year while being held down by three private security guards before takeoff on a British Airways flight from London to Angola. The father of five had lost his appeal to stay in the U.K. and was being deported. Mubenga put up a struggle and died after the guards sat on him for 10 minutes, say witnesses.

But the details of the deportations of two men from rich countries back to their native Africa, and their aftermath, are strikingly different. Mubenga's death is already the subject of a vigorous police inquiry, front-page stories and an investigation by The Guardian newspaper. The case has been discussed in Parliament, where security minister Baroness Neville-Jones called it "extraordinarily regrettable."

Suraj has received no such honors. The 45-year-old's case has largely been ignored in the Japanese media and no politician has answered for his death. An investigation by Chiba prosecutors appears to have stalled. There has been no explanation or apology from the authorities.

His Japanese wife, who had shared a life with him for 22 years, was not even aware he was being deported. She was given no explanation when she identified his body later that day. His body was not returned to her for nearly three months. Supporters believe he put up a struggle because he wanted to tell his wife he was being sent home.

An autopsy report seen in a court document notes abrasions to his face, internal bleeding of muscles on the neck, back, abdomen and upper arm, along with leakage of blood around the eyes, blood congestion in some organs, and dark red blood in the heart. Yet the report bizarrely concluded that the cause of death is "unknown."

Any movement in the Suraj case is largely down to his wife, who wants to remain anonymous. She won a lawsuit against the Justice Ministry, which oversees immigration issues, demanding it disclose documents related to his death. The documents were finally released in May, more than a year after he died.

According to the documents, Suraj was escorted from Yokohama by nine immigration officers to Narita airport. After spending about two hours in a waiting room at the airport, he was taken to another vehicle, in handcuffs and with a rope tied around his waist. They arrived at the aircraft at 1:40 p.m.

Suraj stepped out of the vehicle at 2:20 p.m. The immigration officers said in the documents that because he was protesting his deportation, they restrained him face down and carried him onto the Egypt Air MS965 flight for Cairo. They used an additional pair of metal cuffs around his ankles (a prohibited practice) and forced him to sit in an aisle seat on the back row.

One officer took out four pairs of plastic restraints that he had bought with his own money and tied the handcuffs to his belt. Other officers gagged him so tightly with a towel (again, illegally) that his front teeth bit through the towel. One officer pushed Suraj's neck from behind to bend his body further forward. Suraj was motionless by 2:35 p.m.

At the request of the cabin crew, the officers moved Suraj to a window seat, but he was unresponsive. The officers reasoned that he was just pretending to be sick, but the cabin crew saw Suraj was leaning motionless against the window and asked for him to be removed from the plane at 2:50 p.m. No resuscitation attempt was made until he was carried out of the aircraft and into the vehicle they came in. A doctor in an airport clinic confirmed his death at 3:31 p.m.

"These documents based on the accounts of the officers point to illegal and excessive use of restraints," says Sosuke Seki, a lawyer involved in the case. "Immigration officers are supposed to videotape deportation procedures when restraints are applied, but the officer in charge of Suraj's deportation specifically ordered videotaping to be stopped when he was carried into the aircraft. Whether this was intentional or not must be revealed in the trial."

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Audio: Japan's appalling treatment of refugees

Source: NPR

Transcript

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Did Japan kill a Ghanaian during a removal attempt?

Source: SA Times

Japanese prosecutors are to investigate 10 immigration officials over a Ghanaian man's mysterious airport death during an attempt to deport him from the country, police said.

Police have sent files to prosecutors on their investigation into whether the immigration officials used excessive force against the man, a rare move against Japanese civil servants that could lead to indictments.

Abubakar Awudu Suraj, 45, died at Tokyo's Narita airport in March, as the Japanese immigration officials tried to deport him, escorting the restrained man onto an aircraft bound for Cairo.

"The immigration officials restrained the man who had wildly resisted," said a police spokesman without elaborating. "The cause of his death remains undetermined even after a legal autopsy."

Suraj's Japanese widow has filed a complaint with police, challenging authorities to explain how her husband died as he was being deported for illegally staying in Japan.

Rights activists believe he was gagged with a towel, recalling a similar but non-fatal case in 2004 when a female Vietnamese deportee was handcuffed, had her mouth sealed with tape and was rolled up in blankets.

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Mapping migration contributions by rich countries to poor ones

Source: Centre for global development

Which rich countries are doing the most to help poor ones? Rich and poor nations are linked in many ways—by foreign aid, commerce, the environment, and more. Each year, the CDI rates rich-country governments on how much they are helping poor countries via seven key linkages: aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology. The CDI then takes the average for an overall score.

To see if countries live up to their potential to help, scoring adjusts for size. So small countries can beat big ones. Scores are on a standard scale and 5 = average.

• Explore the CDI. Go Inside the Index for the who, what, and why. Read key messages. Get answers to Frequently Asked Questions.

The migration component of the CDI compares rich countries on how easy they make it for people from poor ones to immigrate, find work or get education, send home money--and even return home with new skills and capital.

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Violence Against LBT People in Asia

Source: International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission - 26 Feb

Lesbians, bisexual women and transgender (LBT) people in Asia experience forced institutionalization in mental rehabilitation clinics, electro shock treatment as aversion therapy, sexual harassment in school and at work, threats of rape to make you straight, school expulsions, eviction by landlords, police kidnapping, family violence, and media stigmatization.

Lesbians face discrimination in the workplace because of their gender and their sexual orientation. Employment and job promotions are denied if women look too masculine. Male coworkers stalk and sexually harass lesbians who cannot report for fear of backlash and retaliation.

Transgender/gender variant people are marginalized in their jobs, and are targeted for blackmail, harassment, and sexual violence from the community or people in positions of authority like the police. Activists who defend the rights of LBT people experience threats to their safety, in some cases, harassment, attacks, even torture and abuse, with police participating in or doing nothing to stop these violations.

Frequently, LBT people in Asia face violence in the “private” sphere—by members of immediate and extended family, community and religious groups. This violence includes beatings, home confinement, ostracism, mental and psychological abuse, verbal abuse, forced marriage, corrective rape and in some cases killings to restore family honor.

The fear of family and community violence is often exacerbated by police complicity, when police officers join forces with family members to break up lesbian couples by arresting, detaining and intimidating them. In some cases, charges of kidnapping, trafficking or child abuse are brought against one of the partners. Police officers also charge lesbians under sodomy laws even if the law does not explicitly include lesbianism.

Compounding the situation is the state’s lack of due diligence in applying existing laws that penalize domestic violence and sexual violence to LBT people who are victimized, thus denying them access to complaint mechanisms and opportunities for redress.

Victims themslves don’t turn to these laws for protection because they lead double lives, and exposing the violence invites disapproval, rejection, discrimination and further violence. Such a vicious cycle allows violence to go unreported, unrecognized, and unchecked.

In some instances, media does report on suicide pacts or foiled same sex marriages but the coverage does not name what happened as abuse or suppression of rights. Instead, the media publicity reinforces the stigma against LBT people and makes them the object of ridicule and shame.

Many humanitarian organizations and women’s rights NGOs fail to understand the severity of violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Government reports to treaty monitoring bodies as well as shadow/alternative reports by women’s right NGOs make no reference to violence against LBT groups and individuals for the most part because sexual rights for women, beyond reproductive rights, are rarely a priority for the women's human rights movement, and the demand for women’s sexual autonomy is treated as incidental or an inferior right compared to the other rights.

At the same time, when LBT activists lobby their governments or treaty bodies like CEDAW or their national human rights institutions, they often lack the data and documentation to support their claims of violence and discrimination, which contributes to the under-recognition of the problem.

In 2007 and 2008, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) met with grassroots and national LGBT groups in Asia to identify their key priorities and needs. From women’s groups, IGLHRC heard that homophobic and transphobic violence against women was their number one issue—even if some of the groups lacked the capacity and resources to make this issue their priority.

To bring visibility to the issue, some groups conducted local studies in their service vicinity, but these were limited in scope. Regional level data gathering on violence against lesbians, bisexual women and transgender (LBT) people in Asia has not yet been carried out.

In response to what we heard, IGLHRC convened a Strategy Workshop in Quezon City, Philippines, May 27-30, 2009 to start a cross-country dialogue among activists from countries in Asia. Their reports confirm that homophobic and transphobic violence against non-heteronormative women in the region is under-reported, under-documented, and consequently eclipsed by other concerns in the region.

This lack of data contributes significantly to lack of funding for services and lack of legislator attention. Few government efforts to end violence against women involve LBT groups.

LBT people are often denied protections from and remedies for violence that other people, including heterosexual women receive from anti-discrimination laws, domestic violence legislation and rape laws. In countries with minimal or poor state responses to violence against women, LBT people are even more marginalized because of the double or triple jeopardy that renders their suffering less visible.

Benefits won by women’s rights movements often does not extend to LBT individuals, although many are part of these movements in their countries. Despite these inconsistencies, LBT activists are working to raise awareness about violence at state and non-state levels in many parts of Asia.

The following country summaries are based on the cross-country exchange convened by IGLHRC in May 2009. They are a prelude to the two-year in-depth qualitative and collaborative research and documentation project that will be undertaken in June 2010 by IGLHRC and LBT partners in Asia, and which will culminate in local advocacy initiatives to stem violence against women on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.

Some of these activities will be linked to existing national, regional and/or international public awareness and violence prevention campaigns such 16 Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women, the UN Secretary General’s Campaign to End Violence Against Women, International Day Against Homophobia, International Women’s Day, Campaign to Just Say No to Violence and Impunity, etc.

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IGLHRC - UN, CEDAW Silent on LBT Women in Concluding Observations

Image by CWGL via Flickr

Source: International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission

IGLHRC is disappointed that the Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) failed to reference issues relating to sexual orientation or gender identity in its Concluding Observations for the 44th session. The countries reviewed in the 44th session were Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Denmark, Guinea Bissau, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Japan, Liberia, Spain, Switzerland, Timor Leste, and Tuvalu.

The Committee's silence is especially striking in the cases of Azerbaijan, Japan, and Switzerland. Shadow reports focusing exclusively on the human rights violations of lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LBT) women were submitted by NGOs from these countries, and activists traveled to New York to attend the CEDAW session and speak at NGO meetings on the violations faced by LBT women.

CEDAW's Concluding Observations constitute the Committee's final recommendations to governments about how to further equality for all women. Where women as a group face discrimination or violence, the situation is often even worse for LBT women. Devaluing women on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity devalues all women, just as adverse treatment of women as a group is particularly detrimental to women who are LBT.

The CEDAW Committee, as well as other human rights treaty bodies including the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR), the Committee Against Torture (CAT), and the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), has recognized sexual orientation as a prohibited basis for discrimination. On at least one occasion the CEDAW Committee has also recommended legislation that protects people from discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Other treaty bodies including CESR and CATR have explicitly included gender identity among the prohibited grounds for discrimination.

The following comparisons reiterate some of the concerns that could have been included within the framework of the Concluding Observations. Although the groups’ recommendations were ultimately omitted from the session’s Concluding Observations, they still provide a useful blueprint for governments to act as they fulfill their obligations under CEDAW.

All the shadow reports and Concluding Observations from CEDAW’s 44th Session can be downloaded here.

Azerbaijan:

The Gender and Development Social Union’s shadow report explicitly highlighted a number of areas where LBT women are particularly at risk in Azerbaijan:

• Prejudice in media and society, including hate speech and hate crimes,
• Domestic violence and forced marriage
• Discrimination in employment, health care, and the legal system.

The shadow report specifically recommended that Azerbaijan amend legislation to address family violence against LBT people, prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, promote education and tolerance, and adopt mechanisms to recognize transgender people in the legal and medical fields.

Azerbaijan should take LBT people into consideration as they implement these recommendations and recognize how LBT people are especially disadvantaged by these forms of inequality identified by the Committee:

• Stereotypical attitudes toward women and portrayals in the media,
• Domestic violence and violence against women, and
• Discrimination in education, employment, and health care.

Japan:

GayJapanNews’ shadow report explicitly highlighted a number of areas where LBT women are particularly at risk in Japan:

• Barriers to changing legal gender that limit access to health care,
information, and venues for expression,
• Discrimination in health care, education, employment, housing, social security, and asylum,
• Cultural expectations and pressure to marry, and
• Domestic violence and violence against women.

The shadow report specifically recommended that Japan adopt anti-discrimination legislation and establish an independent national institution to protect the human rights of LBT people.

Japan should take LBT people into consideration as they implement these recommendations and recognize how LBT people are especially disadvantaged by these forms of inequality identified by the Committee:

• Unequal provisions for inheritance, custody, adoption, and family law,
• Discrimination,
• Stereotypical attitudes toward women and portrayals in the media, and
• Domestic violence and violence against women.

Switzerland:

The shadow report by Fondation Agnodice, Lesbenorganisation Schweiz LOS, Lestime, Homosexuelle Arbeitsgruppen Zurich HAZ, and WyberNet explicitly highlighted a number of areas where LBT women are particularly at risk in Switzerland:

• Discrimination,
• Disparities in health and well-being,
• Barriers to changing legal gender and name across cantons, and
• Lack of recognition in family law.

The shadow reports specifically recommended that Switzerland adopt federal legislation prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, permit LBT couples and individuals to adopt, receive fertility treatment, and undergo artificial insemination, include LBT people in data collection, medical training, outreach and prevention programs, and improvements in care, and allowing transgender people to change their legal name and gender without preconditions.

Switzerland should take LBT people into consideration as they implement these recommendations, and to recognize how LBT people are especially disadvantaged by these forms of inequality identified by the Committee:

• Employment and economic disempowerment,
• Stereotypes,
• Domestic violence and violence against women,
• Lack of protections for rural women, and
• Lack of protections for women in de facto relationships if these dissolve.

Moving Forward on LBT Issues:

Given the considerable overlap between the problems raised by LBT groups and those acknowledged by the Committee, there is a clear justification for LBT inclusion in these reports. The Committee might consider, at minimum, highlighting the risks that LBT people face by including them in their concern for and recommendations on “vulnerable groups of women” (CEDAW, 44th Sess., Concluding Observations: Azerbaijan paras. 35-38; Japan paras. 53-54; Switzerland paras. 43-44).

In the Concluding Observations of the 44th session of CEDAW, there was no discussion of a host of other unique problems faced by individuals who are LBT–invisibility and marginalization in law and society, discrimination and violence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and stark disparities in physical and psychological well-being–which merit swift and specific attention.

The concerns of LBT people are unique enough to merit explicit consideration, but they are also inextricably related to the issues being raised by a broader community of women. Given the similarities between the issues that different groups of women face, the concerns of LBT women can–and should–be incorporated into the framework of recommendations by the Committee.

The 45th CEDAW session will be held January 2010 in Geneva, Switzerland. The Committee will review the human rights records of Botswana, Egypt, Malawi, Netherlands, Panama, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Civil society groups from those countries are encouraged to submit shadow reports on LBT issues.

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For more information see IGLHRC’s July 2009 publication, Equal and Indivisible: Crafting Inclusive Shadow Reports for CEDAW — a handbook for activists who want to write shadow/alternative reports for CEDAW incorporating human rights issues related to sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. Download the handbook here.