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Two
large portraits adorn the walls of the otherwise
colorless apartment in a Tokyo charity home that
Meryem Dogan shares with her two young children.
One shows her smiling husband Erdal and the other is
a photo of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the armed
Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey.
Both men are currently under lock and key: Erdal in
the same immigration detention system that freed
chess legend Bobby Fischer last week, and Ocalan in
a Turkish prison where he is serving a life sentence
for terrorist-related offenses.
They represent the political and the personal of
Meryem's life: the husband she followed from Turkey
in 2000, and the living symbol of resistance for
millions of Kurds -- even those who do not support
violence -- like Erdal who have fled from chaos and
persecution at home.
Many Kurds have found new homes in Europe, North
America and Australia. Unfortunately for Meryem, she
is one of about 500 who chose Japan.
"I have so many bad memories here now after five
years," she says. "I just want to put all this
behind me and look to the future. The future for us
is outside Japan. We've had enough of things here
because we are just so tired."
Even 6-year-old daughter Merve, who cannot remember
living anywhere else, says she wants to leave. "They
keep taking my dad," she says.
Erdal was again detained two weeks ago during a
routine monthly visit to the immigration bureau in
Minato Ward.
"A lot of security people came and completely
surrounded him. He phoned me and said he had been
detailed again. He told me to look after the
children and to not worry. I cried so much."
Erdal had previously spent almost a year in the East
Japan Immigration Bureau Detention Center in Ushiku,
an institution that essentially functions as a
prison.
The Justice Ministry has rejected his family's
application for refugee status, as it has every
Turkish Kurd, and says he must return to where he
came from.
"They are quite blunt about it at the immigration
center," says Meryem. "They say, 'Please go back to
your own country.' "
In March 2003, Erdal went on a fruitless hunger
strike in Ushiku that seriously damaged his health
after his application for temporary release was
rejected.
When he was finally let out, gaunt and frail, last
summer he sat down for 72 days outside the United
Nations University in Aoyama with another Kurdish
family to publicize his case, talking to reporters
and passersby in the fluent Japanese he has picked
up since he came here.
The experience was, says Erdal's brother Deniz, a
revelation.
"Many ordinary Japanese supported our case," he
says. "Of course some said, 'We are a small country
and there is no space so we can't accept
foreigners,' but others were friendly." Meryem
agrees: "We made a lot of friends and met a lot of
amazing Japanese. The problem is not Japanese
people, it is the immigration officials. I really
hate them."
Neither the protest nor the 80,000 signatures they
collected supporting their cause helped Ahmet
Kazankiran and his son Ramazan, who were deported to
Turkey in January despite being recognized as
mandate refugees by the U.N.
The deportation earned Japan an unusually sharp
rebuke from the U.N. and the condemnation of Erdal's
lawyer Takeshi Ohashi, who said it "trampled
underfoot everything the U.N. stands for."
The writing is now on the wall for the Dogans. "My
husband could be sent back at any time," says Meryem.
"We will not even be told about it. They will just
put him on a plane and that will be the end of it.
If they grab my children, I'll have to follow them
back."
Members of the Dogan's support group in Japan, who
prefer to remain anonymous, say that they spent the
weekend after he was detained this month checking
flight reservations to determine that he had not
already been deported.
The Dogans and other Kurds say they face persecution
in Turkey for their political beliefs. "The position
of the Japanese government is that they believe the
Kurdish refugee problem has been solved," says
lawyer Ohashi.
"Immigration officials have toured Turkey with
police and military officials and say Turkey is
safe. But we don't believe this at all, and once the
media turns away the authorities may torture or kill
these people."
The Turkish ambassador to Japan Solmaz Unaydin,
however, denies the allegations that Kurds are
tortured in Turkey.
"These are unfair allegations. Turkey is a fully
democratic country.
"The doors are closing to Kurds in European capitals
because they have caused a lot of terror problems,
so because of easy access to visas, many of these
people are directing their attention here.
"They have tried to make a political case . . .
(and) it is so difficult the way lawyers, NPO groups
and even parliamentarians have become involved in
this.
"Just check the facts. In Turkey nobody is
persecuted unless there is a reason," she says.
Marooned in Tokyo and facing deportation, unable to
get work or welfare or even travel outside the city
without permission, the Dogans now regret their
decision to come to Japan, which was prompted
ironically because it provided easy, visa-free
access to Turkish passport holders.
"When we set off in 2000 we didn't think Japan was
so strict," says Deniz. "We just assumed we would
find asylum here. Now we wish we had gone somewhere
else."
Meryem says many Japanese have been kind to her, and
the family is supported by donations from local
people, but her heart is set on Canada.
A Christian organization has sponsored the family in
an application for asylum to the Canadian government
and although this is no guarantee they will be
flying for Vancouver anytime soon, supporters say
they are "very hopeful."
"Canada has traditionally been generous toward
Kurdish refugees and has also accepted refuges tuned
away by Japan," says one.
In the meantime, Meryem lives in fear that her
husband will be sent back to Turkey.
"We wanted to stay here, but the government is so
against it. My husband is not a criminal, just an
ordinary man who wants to be with his family."
www.japantimes.co.jp
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