Born in Japan, but ordered out

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By Blaine Harden
Sunday, January 17, 2010; A20

TOKYO -- Fida Khan, a gangly 14-year-old, told the court that immigration authorities should not deport him and his family merely because his foreign-born parents lacked proper visas when they came to Japan more than 20 years ago.

During the past two decades, his Pakistani father and Filipino mother have held steady jobs, raised children, paid taxes and have never been in trouble with the law.

"I have the right to do my best to become a person who can contribute to this society," Fida told a Tokyo district court in Japanese, the only language he speaks.

But the court ruled last year that Fida has no right to stay in the country where he was born. Unless a higher court or the Minister of Justice intervenes, a deportation order will soon split the Khan family, sending the father, Waqar Hassan Khan, back to Pakistan, while dispatching Fida and his sister Fatima, 7, to the Philippines with their mother, Jennette.

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Aggressive enforcement of Japanese immigration laws has increased in recent years as the country's economy has floundered and the need for cheap foreign labor has fallen.

Nationality in Japan is based on blood and parentage, not place of birth. This island nation was closed to the outside world until the 1850s, when U.S. warships forced it to open up to trade. Wariness of foreigners remains a potent political force, one that politicians dare not ignore, especially when the economy is weak.

As a result, the number of illegal immigrants has been slashed, often by deportation, from 300,000 in 1995 to just 130,000, a minuscule number in comparison to other rich countries. The United States, whose population is 2 1/2 times that of Japan's, has about 90 times as many illegal immigrants (11.6 million).

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Among highly developed countries, Japan also ranks near the bottom in the percentage of legal foreign residents. Just 1.7 percent are foreign or foreign-born, compared with about 12 percent in the United States. Japan held a pivotal election last year and voters tossed out a party that had ruled for nearly 50 years. But the winner, the Democratic Party of Japan, has so far done nothing to alter immigration policy.

That policy, in a country running low on working-age people, is helping to push Japan off a demographic cliff. It already has fewer children and more elderly as a percentage of its population than any country in recorded history. If trends continue, the population of 127 million will shrink by a third in 50 years and by two-thirds in a century. By 2060, Japan will have two retirees for every three workers -- a ratio that will weaken and perhaps wreck pension and health-care systems.

These dismal numbers upset Masaki Tsuchiya, who manages a Tokyo welding company that for seven years has employed Waqar Khan.

"If Khan is deported, it will not be possible to find anyone like him, as many Japanese workers have lost their hungriness," said Tsuchiya, who has urged Japanese immigration officials to rescind the deportation order for the Khan family. "When the Japanese population is declining, I believe our society has to think more seriously about immigration."

At the Ministry of Justice, immigration officials say they are simply carrying out rules politicians make. The rules, though, are not particularly precise. They grant wide leeway to bureaucrats to use their own discretion in deciding who stays and who gets deported. Last year, immigration officials granted "special permits" to 8,500 undocumented foreigners, with about 65 percent of them going to those who had married a Japanese citizen.

Exercising their discretion under the law, immigration authorities last year offered Noriko Calderon, 13, the wrenching choice of living with her parents or living in her homeland. The girl, who was born and educated in the Tokyo suburbs, could stay in Japan, the government ruled. But she had to say goodbye to her Filipino mother and father, who were deported after living illegally in Japan for 16 years. Following tearful goodbyes at a Tokyo airport, Noriko remained in Japan with an aunt.

Japan's growing need for working-age immigrants has not gone unnoticed by senior leaders in government and business. Slightly relaxed rules have admitted skilled professionals and guest workers. The number of legal foreign residents reached an all-time high of 2.2 million at the end of 2008, with Chinese accounting for the largest group, followed by Koreans, Brazilians (mostly of Japanese descent) and Filipinos.

Still, experts say these numbers are far too low to head off significant economic contraction. A group of 80 politicians said last year that the country needs 10 million immigrants by 2050. Japan's largest business federation called for 15 million, saying: "We cannot wait any longer to aggressively welcome necessary personnel."

Yet the treatment of foreign workers already in Japan is unpredictable. The government opened service centers last year to help foreign workers who lost their jobs to recession. For the first time, it offered them free language training, along with classes on social integration. As that program got underway, however, the government began giving money -- about $12,000 for a family of four -- to foreign workers, if they agreed to go home immediately and never come back to work.

The Khan family's troubles began two years, when a policeman nabbed Waqar Khan on his way home from work. He was detained for nine months. Police in Japan often stop foreign-looking people on the street and ask for residency documents.

The letter of the law was clearly against Khan and his wife. He had overstayed a 15-day tourist visa by 20 years. She came into the country on a forged passport.

But they have refused to sign deportation documents, arguing that although their papers are bad, their behavior as foreigners has been exemplary. Under Japanese law, foreigners are eligible to become naturalized citizens if they have lived in the country for more than five years, have good behavior and are self-sufficient.

The Khans also argue that their children, who regard themselves as Japanese, are assets for Japan. "It is a bit weird that the country needs children, but it is saying to us, go away," Khan said.

The family's lawyer, Gen'ichi Yamaguchi, has tried -- and so far failed -- to convince immigration officials and judges that the Khans are just the sort of hardworking, Japanese-speaking immigrants that the country should embrace for the sake of its own future.

"During the bubble years, the number of illegal workers increased a lot and the police looked the other way," Yamaguchi said. "Japan has always looked at immigrants as cheap but disposable labor."

An appeals court is scheduled to rule on the Khan case in the first week of February.

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.

Iran Lashes Out at West Over Protests

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By ROBERT F. WORTH

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Iranian authorities continued arresting hundreds of opposition members and accused the United States and Britain on Tuesday of orchestrating the violent demonstrations that rocked the capital and other cities on Sunday.

The sister of Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi was detained on Monday night, according to opposition Web sites quoted by news agencies.

A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said countries including the United States and Britain had miscalculated in criticizing the government’s response to the demonstrations, which the government said left at least eight people dead in Tehran. The opposition counted five more deaths in other cities.

“Some Western countries are supporting this sort of activities,” said the spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, according to The Associated Press. “This is intervention in our internal affairs. We strongly condemn it.”

He said the British ambassador to Iran would be summoned for discussions.

The British government said its ambassador, Simon Gass, would respond “robustly” to any criticism and would reiterate calls for Iran to respect the rights of its citizens.

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The speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, rebuked American and British officials for their “disgraceful comments” about the demonstrations, according to the state-run PressTV. The criticisms of Iran’s action were “disgustingly vivid that they clarify where this movement stands when it comes to destroying religious and revolutionary values,” he said.

Iranian authorities arrested at least a dozen opposition figures on Monday, including former Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi, the human rights activist Emad Baghi and three top aides to the former presidential candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi, Iranian news sites reported.

All told, more than 1,500 people have been arrested nationwide since Sunday, including 1,110 in Tehran and 400 in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, the pro-opposition Jaras Web site reported.

In Hawaii, where he is on vacation, Mr. Obama condemned the violence against protesters and called for the release of those “unjustly detained.”

“For months, the Iranian people have sought nothing more than to exercise their universal rights,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “Each time they have done so, they have been met with the iron fist of brutality, even on solemn occasions and holy days.”

He added that the protests in Iran had nothing to do with the United States or other foreign countries. “It’s about the Iranian people, and their aspirations for justice, and a better life for themselves,” he said. “And the decision of Iran’s leaders to govern through fear and tyranny will not succeed in making those aspirations go away.”

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The streets of Tehran were largely quiet on Monday and early Tuesday, as citizens absorbed the shock of Sunday’s violence. Thirteen people were reported to have been killed and many more wounded in street battles in cities across the country between security forces and protesters, who fought back more fiercely than ever before. The government said Monday that eight people had been killed in Tehran, and opposition Web sites catalogued five deaths in other cities.

The government said that it was holding the bodies of five protesters, including a nephew of Mr. Moussavi, the state-run IRNA news agency reported, in what appeared to be an attempt to prevent funerals that could turn into more demonstrations. The bodies were being held pending autopsies.

The authorities’ use of deadly force on the Ashura holiday drew a fierce rebuke on Monday from the opposition cleric and reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi, who noted that even the shah had honored the holiday’s ban on violence.

“What has happened to this religious system that it orders the killing of innocent people during the holy day of Ashura?” Mr. Karroubi said in a statement, according to the Jaras Web site.

Mr. Karroubi, a fierce critic of the government, was attacked Sunday by plainclothes security officers, and other attackers later smashed the front windshield of his car, the Sahamnews Web site reported.

Government supporters blamed opposition members for the violence and called for their prosecution. The Revolutionary Guards issued a statement calling violence by the protesters a “horrible insult to Ashura” and called for “firm punishment of those behind this obvious insult,” the semiofficial Fars news agency reported.

Large groups of police officers stood guard in several central Tehran squares on Monday morning, witnesses said. At least three subway stations were closed, apparently to prevent any further gatherings.

Still, there were reports of continuing scattered protests on Monday in Tehran’s Haft-e-Tir square and other areas, Jaras reported.

The police fired tear gas to disperse a group of mourners who gathered outside the Tehran hospital where the body of Mr. Moussavi’s nephew, Ali Moussavi, had been held, the Nowrooz Web site reported. A prominent opposition figure with ties to the Moussavi family said Ali Moussavi had been killed by assassins.

Family members said Mr. Moussavi’s body disappeared from the hospital overnight, and on Monday IRNA reported that his body and four others were being held while investigations were carried out.

A 27-year-old journalist who was reporting on the street clashes on Sunday was reported missing. The reporter, Redha al-Basha, who was working for Dubai TV, has not been heard from, according to a statement issued by Dubai TV. Mr. Basha was last seen surrounded by security forces in Tehran, witnesses said.

The group Human Rights Activists in Iran said that the 1,100 people arrested in Tehran were being held in Evin Prison, the Gooya Web site reported.

Among those arrested in Isfahan was the son of a senior cleric, Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri. Ayatollah Taheri is the former Isfahan representative of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his son Muhammad is married to the granddaughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of Iran’s 1979 revolution.

Ayatollah Taheri tried last week to lead a memorial service for the dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who died Dec. 20. The arrest of his son was viewed as an effort by the authorities to pressure the ayatollah.

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Toronto, and Peter Baker from Honolulu.

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In Dresden, Cultural Beauty Meets the Bigotry of Marwa al-Sherbini’s Murder

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

DRESDEN, Germany — In early July thousands of mourners took to the streets in Egypt, chanting “Down with Germany.” Thousands more Arabs and Muslims joined them in protests in Berlin. In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad added to the outcry by denouncing German “brutality.”

The provocation was the murder on July 1 of Marwa al-Sherbini, a pregnant Egyptian pharmacist here. She was stabbed 18 times in a Dresden courtroom, in front of her 3-year-old son, judges and other witnesses, reportedly by the man appealing a fine for having insulted Ms. Sherbini in a park. Identified by German authorities only as a 28-year-old Russian-born German named Alex W., he had called Ms. Sherbini an Islamist, a terrorist and a slut when she asked him to make room for her son on the playground swings. Ms. Sherbini wore a head scarf.

The killer also stabbed Elwi Okaz, Ms. Sherbini’s husband and a genetic research scientist, who was critically wounded as he tried to defend her. The police, arriving late on the scene, mistook him for the attacker and shot him in the leg.

More than a week passed before the German government, responding to rising anger across the Arab world, expressed words of sorrow while stressing that the attack did occur during the prosecution of a racist and that the accused man was originally from Russia.

Dresden is one of the great cultural capitals of Europe. It is also the capital of Saxony, a former part of East Germany that, along with having a reputation as Silicon Saxony, has made more than a few headlines in recent years for incidents of xenophobia and right-wing extremism. One wonders how to reconcile the heights of the city’s culture with the gutter of these events.

This year’s annual report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, showed that far-right crime rose last year by 16 percent across the country. Most of these offenses were classified as propaganda crimes — painting swastikas on Jewish headstones or smashing the windows of restaurants run by immigrants — but politically motivated violent acts like murder, arson and assault accounted for 1,042 of the nearly 20,000 crimes recorded, a rise of 6.3 percent over 2007.

And these violent crimes turned out to be far more commonplace in parts of the former East Germany. Saxony, with roughly 5 percent of the country’s population, accounted for 12 percent of the violence classified as far right in nature, the report said.

These days Dresden’s center, once obliterated by Allied bombs, is a marvel of civility, a restored Baroque fairyland surrounded by Socialist-era and post-Socialist-era sprawl. The rebuilt Frauenkirche, the great Baroque cathedral where Bach played, again marks the skyline with its bell-shaped dome, as it did for centuries.

The ruin of the Frauenkirche became a gathering spot for protests against the East German regime during Communist times. In February, as usual on the anniversary of the Allied air raids, neo-Nazis marched through the streets. Some 7,500 of them carried banners condemning the “bombing holocaust.” They were outnumbered, Spiegel Online reported, by anti-Nazi demonstrators, but 7,500 was nonetheless twice as many neo-Nazis as showed up last year.

The other day only the benign clop-clop of horse-drawn carriages sounded across the cobblestone square outside the cathedral, the carriages bouncing camera-toting tourists past high-end jewelry shops and overpriced cafes. Nearby, the Zwinger palace, perhaps the most beautiful of all Baroque complexes, attracted the usual supplicants to Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, which was paired in the Gemäldegalerie with an African sculpture.

Germany is now a bastion of democracy in the heart of Europe. But the far right is on the rise across the Continent, and xenophobia is gaining in this country, not least among youth and not least singling out Muslims. A recent two-year government survey of 20,000 German teenagers classified one in seven as “highly xenophobic” and another 26.2 percent as “fairly xenophobic.”

“It was known that the figures were high,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said. “But I’m appalled that they’re this high.”

The newspaper Tagesspiegel reported that Alex W. asked Ms. Sherbini in the courtroom, “Do you have a right to be in Germany at all?” before warning her that “when the N.D.P. comes to power, there’ll be an end to that.”

“I voted N.D.P..,” he added.

No surprise.

The far-right National Democratic Party, a marginal but noisy troublemaker on the German political scene with a tiny official membership (some 7,000), is as strong in Saxony as it is anywhere. Recent polls have routinely shown its support in the state as nearing 10 percent of the population; it claims 8 seats out of the 124 in the state parliament in Dresden. On Tuesday the party issued a statement calling for a black politician, Zeca Schall, working on regional elections in Thuringia for the ruling Christian Democratic Union, “to head home to Angola.” Thuringia should “remain German,” the statement said. Mr. Schall, Angolan-born, has lived in Thuringia, another region in the former East, since 1988.

High-tech industries and research institutes like the one where Ms. Sherbini’s husband works, which recruit foreign experts, have lifted Dresden economically above much of the rest of the former East, and last year nearly 10 million tourists fattened the city’s coffers. With half a million residents, some 20,000 of them foreigners, the capital looks prosperous and charming, like its old self.

All of which gets back to the problem of reconciliation: What are the humanizing effects of culture?

Evidently, there are none.

To walk through Dresden’s museums, and past the young buskers fiddling Mozart on street corners, is to wonder whether this age-old question may have things backward. It presumes that we’re passive receivers acted on by the arts, which vouchsafe our salvation, moral and otherwise, so long as we remain in their presence. Arts promoters nowadays like to trumpet how culture helps business and tourism; how teaching painting and music in schools boosts test scores. They try to assign practical ends, dollar values and other hard numbers, never mind how dubious, to quantify what’s ultimately unquantifiable.

The lesson of Dresden, which this great city unfortunately seems doomed to repeat, is that culture is, to the contrary, impractical and fragile, helpless even. Residents of Dresden who believed, when the war was all but over, that their home had somehow been spared annihilation by its beauty were all the more traumatized when, in a matter of hours, bombs killed tens of thousands and obliterated centuries of humane and glorious architecture.

The truth is, we can stare as long as we want at that Raphael Madonna; or at Antonello da Messina’s “St. Sebastian,” now beside a Congo fetish sculpture in another room in the Gemäldegalerie; or at the shiny coffee sets, clocks and cups made of coral and mother-of-pearl and coconuts and diamonds culled from the four corners of the earth in the city’s New Green Vault, which contains the spoils of the most cultivated Saxon kings. But it won’t make sense of a senseless murder or help change the mind of a violent bigot.

What we can also do, though, is accept that while the arts won’t save us, we should save them anyway. Because the enemies of civilized society are always just outside the door.