Japan upsets its alien residents

Press, 3 July 1985, Page 6

Japan upsets its alien residents

NZPA-AP Tokyo About 370 foreign residents in Japan have refused to comply with a requirement to be fingerprinted and the number is expected to grow to 1500 later this year, Kyodo News Service has reported. Kyodo, quoting a Justice Ministry official, said 361 of those challenging the alien registration law are Korean and the others are American, Chinese, French, British, Belgian and Irish. Japan’s 680,000 Korean residents, many of whom were born in Japan, make up the country’s largest minority. Under the law, which has become a sore point in Japan-South Korean relations and pitted the Justice Ministry against several municipal offices, all

foreigners aged over 16 who live in Japan for a year or more must be fingerprinted to receive an alien registration card. Critics say the system is denigrating and discriminatory because among Japanese only criminals are fingerprinted. The cards must be renewed every five years. This year about 270,000 people are due to renew their cards. Hoping to calm protests, which began as a trickle in 1980 but gained momentum in recent months, the Japanese Cabinet in May revised the law to replace the black ink used in the fingerprinting with a colorless medical fluid. Critics reacted negatively to the revision, which took effect, this month, calling it a meaningless change.