: A Belarusian Olympic Athlete Found Protection in Japan. Most Refugees Do Not #WorldNEWS Some of the most gripping sports drama in Japan this week took place not at the Tokyo Summer Olympics, but at

A Belarusian Olympic Athlete Found Protection in Japan. Most Refugees Do Not #WorldNEWS
Some of the most gripping sports drama in Japan this week took place not at the Tokyo Summer Olympics, but at Haneda Airport.
Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya says she was taken there against her will after publicly criticizing Belarusian Olympic officials online. She was to be returned to Belarus, under the authoritarian regime of Alexander Lukashenko, to face the consequences.
She appealed to the airport police and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and a standoff ensued. After a night at an airport hotel, she was brought to the Polish Embassy in Tokyo and granted a humanitarian visa. She boarded a plane, headed for Warsaw, on Wednesday.
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The Belarusian case, which gained worldwide media attention, stands in stark contrast to how Japan treats thousands of refugee applicants who come to the nation of 126 million from impoverished or strife-torn countries—only to be turned away, or face years in legal limbo.
Refugees viewed as threat to society

David Mareuil–Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesProtestors holding banners and shouting slogans move toward the building of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Services Bureau, where several foreign nationals are detained, on June 20 2021 in Tokyo.
In 2020, Japan granted refugee status to only 47 out of nearly 4,000 applicants; another 44 were given special residence permits on humanitarian grounds, according to Ministry of Justice data. The figure of 47 was a 10-year high. In 2013, Japan recognized just six refugees; in 2014, 11.
The countrys uncharitable refugee policy remains in place despite the cratering of Japan’s workforce and the fact that millions of homes and other buildings in Japan lie abandoned. Both factors are due to the countrys aging population and low birth rates, which leaders have long recognized as a significant threat to the worlds third-largest economy.
“The Japanese government appears to be more focused on restricting and filtering as much as possible the number of refugees who are accepted into Japan, rather than to accept as liberally as possible on a humanitarian basis,” says Teppei Kasai, a Tokyo-based program officer at Human Rights Watch. “This is partly because the government believes many of those applying for refugee status are attempting to ‘cheat’ the system by lying about their circumstances, and that they somehow pose a ‘threat’ to Japanese society. ”
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That’s how Gloria Nkechi Onyekweli felt. She arrived in Japan in December 2006 on a fake passport after fleeing Nigeria, fearing that government security forces were seeking her for being part of a group calling for self-determination for the Igbo people in the countrys Biafra region.