Japan, usually very reluctant to welcome refugees, welcomed on Tuesday April 5 twenty Ukrainians who fled the war and who arrived at Tokyo airport on board a Japanese government plane. These people, who were in Poland following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, arrived with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi who was visiting Warsaw. Yoshimasa Hayashi made a multi-day trip to Poland, which hosts a large part of the approximately 4.2 million Ukrainian refugees.
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Japan generally accepts only a few dozen refugees a year out of thousands of applicants, and its borders are currently closed to almost all foreign visitors as part of the fight against Covid-19. “We learned that several people sincerely wanted to be evacuated to Japan, but had difficulty traveling on their own.“said government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno during a press briefing on Tuesday. “From a humanitarian point of view, 20 of these people were invited to take a government plane“, he added.
Emergency reception plan
Japan has taken in 404 Ukrainians so far, in addition to 20 on Tuesday, following Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s announcement of an emergency reception plan last month. In the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Japan acted in concert with the major Western countries, adopting a very firm tone and a series of severe sanctions against Moscow, Russian banks and personalities. However, he prefers to use the wordevacuatedrather refugees who benefit from a five-year residence permit. Tokyo grants a 90-day visa toevacuatedUkrainians and this visa can be transformed into a one-year residence permit which allows them to work afterwards.
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Apart from the arrival of 20 Ukrainians on Tuesday, Japan announced an additional $100 million in humanitarian aid, following a $100 million humanitarian donation to Ukraine and neighboring conflict-affected countries announced last month. last. In 2020, Japan accepted just 47 refugees and 44 people on humanitarian grounds out of nearly 4,000 applicants, and human rights groups have long accused Tokyo of doing too little to help those fleeing conflict.