In recent years, Western media has reported that Japanese firms frequently confiscate the passports of guest workers in Japan, particularly unskilled laborers from the Philippines and other poorer Asian countries.
Prison conditions met international standards;[22] although some lacked adequate medical care and sufficient heating in the winter or cooling in the summer and some facilities were overcrowded.
Most prisons did not provide heating during nighttime hours in winter despite freezing temperatures, subjecting inmates to a range of preventable cold injuries.
Foreign prisoners in the Tokyo area continued to present to visiting diplomats during the year fingers and toes affected by chillblains of varying severity, the direct result of long-term exposure to cold.
During the year, a male prison warden was charged with "violence and cruelty by a special public officer" for engaging in sexual acts with a female inmate awaiting trial.
However, Amnesty International claimed that human rights groups were not allowed access to Nagoya prison because of ongoing court cases related to alleged abuses.
Under the Criminal Procedure Code, police and prosecutors have the power to control or limit access by legal counsel when deemed necessary for the sake of an investigation.
The government generally respected in practice the constitutional provisions for the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial tribunal in all criminal cases.
Its provisions include hiring substantial numbers of additional court and MOJ personnel, revising bar examinations, establishing new graduate law schools to increase the overall number of legal professionals threefold by 2010, and requiring that courts and opposing litigants jointly work to improve trial planning by allowing for earlier evidence collection and disclosure.
A defendant is informed of the charges upon arrest and is assured a public trial by an independent civilian court with defense counsel and the right of cross-examination.
No guidelines mandate the acceptable quality of communications between judges, lawyers, and non-Japanese speaking defendants, and no standard licensing or qualification system for certifying court interpreters exists.
The clubs often provide major media outlets with exclusive access to news sources, while generally barring foreign and freelance reporters.
Free speech and press issues include: Journalists, commentators and media experts say that news outlets are now censoring their own coverage or removing critical voices to avoid drawing official ire.
In practice, the government provided protection against refoulement, the return of persons to a country where they feared persecution, but did not routinely grant refugee or asylum status.
[38] A nongovernmental organization (NGO), in a statement to the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, noted that, from 1982 to December 2002, 301 persons were accepted as refugees.
Out of 336 refugee claims submitted in 2003, the Government granted asylum to 10 persons from Burma, Burundi, and Iran and issued long-term residence permits based on humanitarian considerations to 16.
[37] While this law provides a way for asylum seekers to have legal status in the country during the refugee recognition process, in practice it was quite difficult to obtain such permits.
In January 2003, the Immigration Bureau began to give detailed, written explanations of decisions not to grant refugee status to asylum-seekers and opened an information office at Narita Airport for potential asylum seekers.
[48] When couples divorce there is a strong bias in Japanese family courts which gives 80% of the mothers custody of children according to 2004 statistics from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.
[50] In 2020, lawmakers of the European Union adopted a non-binding resolution for Japan to adhere to parental access, visitation rights and to return abducted children.
The Tokyo prefectural government continued programs to protect the welfare of stateless children, whose births their illegal immigrant mothers had refused to register for fear of forcible repatriation.
[51] The law grants child welfare officials the authority to prohibit abusive parents from meeting or communicating with their children, although due to Japanese cultural views on family matters being "private", this enforcement option is rarely exercised.
[52][53][54][55][56] On July 20, 2020, a report by HRW revealed that child athletes in Japan have routinely suffered physical, sexual and verbal abuse from their coaches, which led some of them to take their own lives.
The Action Plan calls for a review of "entertainer" visas, strengthened immigration control, revision of the penal code to make trafficking in persons a crime, and added protection of victims through shelters, counselling, and repatriation assistance.
Women and girls from Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, Malaysia, Burma, and Indonesia also were trafficked into the country in smaller numbers.
The country was a destination for illegal immigrants from China who were trafficked by organized crime groups and held in debt bondage for sexual exploitation and indentured servitude in sweatshops and restaurants.
The Deliberation Panel on the Employment of the Handicapped, which operates within the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, has mandated that private companies with 300 or more employees hire a fixed minimum proportion of persons with disabilities.
In 2003, workers with disabilities employed by private companies comprised on average 1.5% of the total number of regular employees, somewhat less than the legally stipulated rate of 1.8%.
Harassment and threats against pro-North Korean organizations and persons reportedly have increased since the 2002 admission by North Korea that it had kidnapped more than a dozen Japanese citizens.
Minimum wages are set on a regional (prefectural) and industry basis, with the input of tripartite (workers, employers, public interest) advisory councils.