Japan jails, deports N.Z. woman

Press, 5 October 1984, Page 1

Japan jails, deports N.Z. woman

From

BRUCE ROSCOE

in Tokyo

A New Zealand woman who suffers a heart condition was deported from Tokyo yesterday after spending six weeks in prison on charges of overstaying her visa by two years. The woman, a New Zealand student, aged 30, of Feilding, was arrested by the Tokyo police on August 13, prosecuted by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office, and sentenced by the Tokyo Summary Court. After her arrest, she was put in solitary confinement in a IVz sq m cell at, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department headquarters and claims to have been interrogated eight hours a day for a week. She said the first day’s interrogation lasted 11 hours. From one comer of a room an interrogator would shout questions to her in Japanese, and from another corner an interpreter would shout the same questions to her in English. She was not given prison clothes and was not permitted to change her own clothes for five days. In the

heat of the Tokyo summer nights she had to sleep in all her clothes, and when once at night she took her jeans off, she was awakened by a guard and ordered to put them on.

Her cell had a tiny threebar window which let in light from another room. She had told the police that in April she suffered chest spasms which her doctor had diagnosed as attacks of angina. Within a day of her arrest, the Tokyo police took her to a hospital for a medical examination which she said confirmed that her heart condition was angina. She was transferred on August .25 to the Shinagawa immigration detention centre, and then on August 30 to the immigration jail at Yokohama.

Immigration officials allowed her one visit a month on the condition that the visitor was a relative. Similarly, she was allowed to write or receive one letter a month, if the correspondence was with a relative. She has no relative in Japan.

“It would be terrible without relatives or friends, or without any embassy that

cares,” the woman said in an interview before deportation. “Some foreigners stay in these jails for years because there is no-one to help them.”

A New Zealand friend with whom she was staying before her arrest won visiting rights after pleading in tears with immigration authorities. “The first time I saw her was for just 20 minutes. She cried and cried the whole time,” her friend said. . “I had to tell the guards what I would talk to her about, and a guard listened to our conversation and took notes.”

Japanese prison toilets were built in such a way that when she used them she was always visible from the waist up to male Japanese prison guards. At detention centre toilets she was visible from the shoulders.

up. The Tokyo Summary Court fined her 200,000 yen (about SNZI66O). She said she had no money to pay the fine, and refused to allow her mother or friends to pay it. On September 13 she was moved to Tokyo Prison to

start a 100-day sentence, doing prison work for 2000 yen a day to pay the fine. During the moves from one prison to another she was handcuffed and a rope was threaded through the handcuffs and tied round her waist.

At Tokyo Prison she was held in isolation, folding brown paper to make the bases of paper bags, eight hours a day in her cell. She was allowed a 30-minute break for lunch or exercise, also in isolation. She said she was not beaten but was sometimes shoved and ignored by guards when she asked them the time.

After eight days of folding paper she was about to be transferred yet again, to Tochigi Women’s Prison, when her friend, who feared she was breaking down, raised enough money from Japanese and foreign friends to pay the rest of the fine. The friend said she once took a letter from the woman’s mother to the prison but the guards would not accept it. She was told to post it to the prison. Prison authorities tran-

slated letters into Japanese before passing them to the woman.

At the Yokohama prison, where the woman was given grey prison clothes and rubber sandals, she could take a bath once a day and there was television. She could buy prison-approved items such as soap and toothpaste but found the prison-sup-plied female sanitary napkins inadequate. No details of the woman’s case have been made public in Japan, and it is not clear why she overstayed her visa. She said she was not sure whether her six-month cultural visa for Japanese language study would be extended, and said that she had “many personal problems” and just “let things slip.”

It is known that during the two years she also taught English, was a hostess at some bars, and did some make-up work. The police warned that if she appealed aginst her deportation order they might press other charges. The police had stopped her on a Tokyo Street and asked to see her alien registration card, which

foreigners must carry at all times. The card contains visa and personal details. She was then incarcerated and her friend’s house was searched by detectives wearing white gloves.

The woman came to Japan on a one-month tourist visa in 1980. She extended the visa once, then went to the Philippines to get a cultural visa, which she extended twice.

Be.fore her deportation, she was not allowed to return to her friend’s house and would have lost all her

personal belongings were it not for her friend.

The woman’s mother is believed to have paid her airfare to New Zealand. Tokyo immigration authorities billed the woman for transport costs to and from the four prisons, and to Tokyo airport. “It might sound strange, but I want to come back to Japan,” the woman said before being deported. “I might be able to apply for another visa after one or two years.”