Japan ’s native people are fighting for the recognition of their rights

Four weeks before the G8 summit in the homeland of the Ainu native people on the island of Hokkaido (7-9.7.2008) a first success of the conference of the richest industrial countries is marked up for the native people of Japan. After years of resistance politicians of all parties of the Japanese parliament are voting for the recognition of the Ainu as an „indigenous people”, reported the Asia consultant of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV), Ulrich Delius, on Wednesday in Göttingen. „Both houses of parliament intend in the session which lasts until 15th June to pass a resolution in this vein with a demand to the Japanese government.” The chances of success for this initiative

are good since leading representatives of the ruling liberal-democratic party, the LDP, support the initiative.

„The G8 summit has aroused so much interest in Hokkaido that Japan’s politicians can no longer ignore the discrimination of the native people”, said Delius. The approximately 25,000 Ainu on Hokkaido in the north of Japan hope that recognition of their rights will bring them more rights in Japanese society and improve their social status. They have been fighting for decades above all for their traditional land-rights and adequate compensation for the cases of expropriation which have taken place. The attempts of Ainu organisations to achieve their traditional rights through the courts have had only limited success.

The Ainu belong to the poorest people in Japan . They are discriminated when it comes to jobs and 38 percent of them are still living from assistance programmes. Many eke out a living as day labourers, fishermen and peasants. The Ainu cannot be distinguished physically from the rest of Japanese society. But since the native people are until today treated as second-class citizens many hide their identity. Rejection in society goes so far that it is hardly possible to marry into a Japanese family. In the 19th century the Ainu were called „dogs” by the Japanese. Japanese settlers exploited their wives as sex-slaves.

Since 1869 the native people have been compulsorily assimilated. It was only in 1991 that the Japanese government admitted to the United Nations that the Ainu were the first inhabitants of Japan . The „Law for the Promotion of the Culture of the Ainu” passed in 1997 did mark further progress, since at least the cultural rights of the individual were more clearly set out, however the recognition which had been hoped for of their traditional land-rights and their status as a group lay by the wayside.