IOC announces Refugee Team to compete in Tokyo despite Japan being anti-refugee

IOC announces Refugee Team to compete in Tokyo despite Japan being anti-refugee

Kanako Mita and Lee Jay Walker

Modern Tokyo Times

In the modern political world, everything is about grand statements. The same applies to countless corporations and sporting organizations. Yet, the real world is very different. Hence, the announcement by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of the Refugee Team to partake in the Olympics is ironic. After all, Japan takes in very few refugees compared with other G-7 nations and so forth.

Reuters reports, “In 2019, just 0.4% of asylum applications were successful in Japan, as opposed to 25.9% in Germany and 29.6% in the United States.”

Thus the chances of any refugee on the Olympic Refugee Team obtaining refugee status in Japan is rather slim, to say the least. However, it is a good publicity stunt for the IOC despite politically correct statements and objectives usually being hollow.

The same applies to the “kick racism out of football” and the various organisations of this sport. For despite all the good that grand statements do behind the scenes is a world of capitalism and exploitation of workers who make merchandise in poorer nations.

Likewise, the next football World Cup is in Qatar despite the common abuse of poor migrants and other ills related to religious and sexual discrimination. The Guardian reports, “More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago, the Guardian can reveal.”

Indeed, the next Winter Olympics will be held in China. Thus the grand statements of the Olympics will ring hollow in Tibet and Xinjiang when “brotherhood,” “peace,” and “global unity” are declared.

Therefore, the 29 refugees on the Refugee Team would more than likely be refused refugee status with full rights in Japan. More likely, their fate would be long periods in detention and suffering various ills related to limited rights.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/23/revealed-migrant-worker-deaths-qatar-fifa-world-cup-2022

https://www.reuters.com/artcile/article/us-japan-law-immigration/critics-denounce-japan-asylum-reform-as-human-rights-violation-idUSKBN2C915C


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