Forgotten by Society

[1]　If you’ve watched the news recently, you’ve probably seen stories about refugees. According to the United Nations, more than seventy million people worldwide are now refugees because of persecution and conflict. Very few of these refugees come to Japan because Japan usually only accepts fewer than fifty refugees a year. However, if we take time to look at the circumstances of refugees, we can appreciate not only how difficult their lives are but also how much we have in common with them.

[2]　Refugees are often members of racial or religious minority groups. In Myanmar, for example, the Rohingya people were persecuted by the government. In 2017, the army burned down Rohingya villages, raped women, and killed thousands. As a result, about 850,000 people fled from their homes and into neighboring Bangladesh. Even today, these refugees cannot return to their home country. Furthermore, in addition to the ongoing suffering caused by their traumatic experience, they continue to struggle to adapt to life in underfunded refugee camps.

[3]　Many people become refugees due to war and other conflicts. In 2011, a civil war began in Syria, killing nearly four hundred thousand people and injuring more than one million. About eleven million people-more than half of Syria's total population-became refugees as a result. Try to imagine what they experienced. Can you imagine instantly losing your home or even your family in an airstrike? How about living in a refugee camp where hunger or disease is widespread? Even if we try, it can be hard to imagine how tough life is for displaced persons.

[4]　Japan is generally closed to refugees, but there are still some living among us. For example, there are now more than two thousand Kurdish refugees living in Japan. However, because the Japanese government has never given them permission for permanent residency, some are forced to live in prison-like immigration facilities. Others are granted temporary permission to live outside of these facilities but are unable to legally work. Furthermore, there is another type of refugee in Japan you might not have considered: people who fled from their hometowns because of the nuclear accident or natural disasters. These “internal refugees” are also affected by fear, sadness, and uncertainty about their futures.

[5]　Hannah Arendt, a German-Jewish philosopher, described refugees as people who have fallen into “holes of oblivion” and been forgotten by society. She argued that, in order to bring them out of these holes, we need to treat refugees as individuals and not just objects of pity. We probably all know people who have fallen into “holes of oblivion” through feelings of fear, loneliness, and loss, even if they are not refugees. By sitting down with and compassionately listening to people near us—friends, family, and neighbors—we can take the first step to ensure that refugees and those suffering from similar feelings of isolation are not forgotten.