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Immigration Bureau officials leaked the names of
Turkish Kurd asylum-seekers to Turkish security
authorities and visited their homes and remaining
family members in Turkey with local investigative
officials, their lawyer said Wednesday.
The allegation first surfaced when some of the
applicants were informed by family members that some
Japanese had visited their homes with Turkish police
and military officers and asked about relatives who
had filed refugee applications in Japan.
On Monday, the Justice Ministry, which supervises
the Immigration Bureau, submitted a report on the
investigations to the trial of one of the Turkish
Kurd asylum-seekers, lawyer Takeshi Ohashi said.
The names of at least nine Turkish Kurd
asylum-seekers were leaked to the Turkish
investigative authorities, and at least seven
people's family homes were visited by Immigration
Bureau officials between late June and early July,
according to the report, Ohashi said.
The officials are believed to have concealed their
identity when visiting the houses, claiming to be an
embassy official and a journalist.
"This undermines the credibility of the Japanese
government's refugee-recognition system," Ohashi
said at a press conference in Tokyo. "Such an
investigation scheme is unjustifiable because it
would highly likely threaten the safety of
applicants and their family members as well as
confidence in Japan's refugee-recognition system."
One of the nine applicants said at the press
conference that his family members were questioned
for a full day by a local police officer and then
told to report to antiterrorist police for further
questioning.
Another applicant, Dogan Erdal, said he had spoken
to his family in Turkey once since the investigators
called at their home, but had subsequently been
unable to contact them. He disclosed his name
because he now had no reason to hide it, he said.
"My family members have scattered to escape the
authorities, and I can't contact them any longer,"
he said.
The attorneys representing the Turkish Kurd
asylum-seekers and an organization of immigration
lawyers issued protest statements Wednesday. They
plan to report the case to the Japan Federation of
Bar Associations as soon as Monday and seek ways to
protect the rights of the refugee applicants in
question. They also plan to press the Justice
Ministry to stop conducting investigations in
cooperation with home-country authorities.
Nathalie Karsenty, senior legal officer of the U.N.
High Commissioner for Refugees' Tokyo office, said
the investigations allegedly conducted by the
Immigration Bureau would not be in line with UNHCR
standards or those of the international community.
An official of the Immigration Bureau's general
affairs section said the bureau could not comment on
methods used to investigate asylum-seekers'
backgrounds, although he admitted its officials had
visited the homes of Kurdish applicants in Turkey.
Conducting inquiries in applicants' countries of
origin is standard procedure, he added.
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