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10.
Chancery, Tokyo met Horimura in November; he said
that in 1985 Japan expected to take 54 refugees from Hong
Kong (compared to 34 in 1984; in the event 52 were
resettled in 1985); that the date of the resettlement
mission might be further advanced to end-1985; and that the
mission might interview more refugees than hitherto.
interviewed.
inflexible and
11.
At a UNHCR meeting in January Japan announced that
25 refugees accepted for resettlement in Japan were
awaiting travel from Hong Kong, and that the possibility of
taking more was being studied. The 25 had in fact been
accepted by a mission in early 1985; Suganuma (Deputy
Director of Refugees Division) told Chancery, Tokyo in
February that most of them were already in Japan, and that
the end-1985 mission had accepted 5 out of 134 refugees
Suganuma conceded that the criteria were
that that although Japan was avowedly willing to
accept more refugees, the application of Japan's rules
would produce few candidates. He added that his Division
favoured changing the rules So that resettlement could be
made easier, but that other Ministries with a vested
interest in maintaining high employment for Japanese opposed any such move. Suganuma indicated that the MFA's
thinking was still at an early stage, and that any decision
was a long way off. He said that many Vietnamese refugees had found it difficult to integrate into Japanese society
(cf other ethnic minorities eg Koreans). In response to
his request for material to bolster his case we have
Tokyo details of the US, Australian and Canadian
resettlement criteria.
sent
12.
The Minister in Tokyo (Mr Hitch) raised the subject
in general terms with Yanagiya (PUS equivalent, MFA) in
February and HM Ambassador expressed
April his
concern
over Japan's
performance: the latter took note.
to Yanagiya on
poor resettlement
17
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