Dear Damian,

Thank you for your continual support and participation in our work.

The year 2011 was such a fruitful year. We provided services to dozens of victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation, and accomplished our first international symposium as well as training more than 4500 individuals including law enforcement and social service providers.

Truly encouraged by your support in the last year, Polaris Japan has renewed commitment to further advance our work in this coming year of 2012.

Today, I would like to share a story of Kaori-chan that always comes to my mind during this winter season.

Kaori-chan was a Japanese female youth who decided to secretly run-away from home with a man who had been introduced through her friend. The man, who was slightly older than Kaori-chan, drove her to a suburb area a couple of hours away from the metropolitan area. At that time, Kaori-chan had no clue that the man was actually a recruiter from the commercial sex industry. The man frequently recruited girls l ike Kaori-chan online via “Deaikei-site” or other social networking. Day after day, the man “delivered” Kaori-chan to hotel rooms to meet customers and did not allow her back into the car or the house unless she meets the quota of the day..

Eventually, Kaori-chan started sending a number of “SOS”messages via web-bulletin board. One day, a total stranger saw her plea for help. Deeply concerned about the messages, the person called Polaris’ Hotline to report the case. Polaris Staff immediately reached out to Kaori-chan and quickly learned that she was forced into prostitution for a full month. During that time, she had been told by the pimp that there is no one, even police, who care about a girl in prostitution. Kaori-chan took a courageous step to meet with us.

It was a cold winter day in December, when I (Fujiwara) and other Polaris Staff arrived at the station nearby Kaori-chan’s place. Petite and fragile, Kaori-chan started talking little by little in her small voice about what had happened to her. In the following week, we met with Kaori-chan again on a freezing winter day. This time, we were able to take a bus together to bring Kaori-chan to the police station in the jurisdiction. With the support from the police, the child service center staff, and her father, Kaori-chan was able to go back to her own home city, the place where she used to belong.

It has been about three years since I met Kaori-chan, but this story repeatedly comes to my mind, telling me that it takes “A PHONE CALL” to save a life.

Upon receiving emergency calls, Polaris staff takes action 24/7. Human trafficking requires an emergency response, but unfortunately, Japanese society and media remain ignorant about the severity. Despite the lack of awareness among the Japanese society,women and youth are continuously brought to Polaris Japan through our Hotline service. We see so many people that need our help.

Our Free-Dial Hotline Service is largely funded by individual supporters like you. In order to sustain our Hotline Services, Polaris Project Japan launched a new fund-raising program called Akari Project.

Your monthly contribution enables Polaris Project to help victims of trafficking like Kaori-chan. Our goal is to increase 50 Supporters by March 8th- the International Women’s day. Please join the Akari Project, take your first step at:

http://polarisproject.jp/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=990

We look forward to your participation in Akari Project to become a light (Akari) of hope for the girls and women living in darkness.

If you have questions about this Akari-Project, please contact us or call 050-3496-7615.

Thank you for your continuing support.

Warmly,

Shihoko Fujiwara

Polaris Project Japan

A female member of the production crew placed an ad online offering ‘escort’ services and began receiving calls within minutes. They received over 350 calls and text messages in a 5 day period from men looking for sex.

It’s almost surreal for me to see that the society I grew up in has such a huge demand for prostitution. I wonder if it would be any different if the Johns were to know how the industry is run by career criminals. Does empathy exist within the market or are the paying customers willing to turn a blind eye so long as whatever misery there may be isn’t for them to bear?

Please watch the video.

I wanted to learn more about the foreign trainee program (Technical Intern Training Program) in Japan, which has been repeatedly criticised in the annual TIP reports, so I spoke with the lawyer to took Jiang Xiao Dong’s case to court – Lila Abiko.

There are ‘sending organisations’ in foreign countries who recruit workers who are then sent either to ‘primary accepting organisations’ (worker dispatch agencies) or ‘secondary accepting organisations’ (the companies they will work for). The Japan International Training Cooperation Organization (JITCO) is deeply involved in this program and supervising accepting organisations.

This seems like a normal framework for legitimate and profitable business. What could motivate the participants to become involved in labour exploitation?

Who are JICTO and what do they do?

“JITCO promotes the foreign trainee program overseas, giving lectures and introducing the system,” says Ms. Abiko. “They make some documents, such as manuals on safety and rules which are needed by accepting companies. They do some monitoring, but have no regulatory powers, so they’re just checking and reporting.”

“Five ministries contributed to create a budget for JITCO. But the government has been cutting the budget. On the other hand, JITCO is collecting a membership fee from primary accepting organisations. It looks like a public organisation, but in reality it’s a private organisation providing a service for money.”

What is the role of the sending organisations?

They’re typically overseas employment agencies who recruit interns and send them to accepting organisations in Japan. “There are sending organisations taking deposit money from the interns when they’re coming to Japan. When interns are claiming for their rights, the sending organisations pressure their families in their homeland sometimes and the primary accepting organisations pressure the trainees and interns.”

Before the change to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in July 2010, sending organisations could take deposit money from trainees and interns, but that is now prohibited by Japanese law. But does this make an impact on how overseas firms conduct their business? According to Ms. Abiko, “there’s no effective measure to check that, but at least it was written in that law. We’ve heard of a lot of violations after the change. Everybody’s saying ‘we’ll see how it goes’ – not many people understand that the situation hasn’t really changed.”

What is the role of the primary accepting organisations?

Primary accepting organisations are staffing agencies which specialise in the employment placement of temporary workers. Prior to the change in the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in July 2010, trainees were not considered to be workers, so primary accepting organisations didn’t need a license to perform their service. Since the law changed, a special type of staffing license is required and some of the smaller primary accepting organisations didn’t manage to get one. “Some say the bad ones have disappeared from the market. Since they need to get the visa for the trainees and interns from the Ministry of Justice, they have to prove that they have a license.”

Who are the secondary accepting organisations?

These are companies of all sizes across a range of industries. In 2009, 50,064 new foreign trainees were accepted into Japan.
Textiles 10,987
Food Processing 9,398
Metal Manufacturing 3,775
Agriculture 6,717
Electronics 2,244
Construction 3,240
Metal (mining, smelting) 2,813
Other 10,890

Jiang Xiao Dong worked for a metal processing company called Fuji Denka Kogyo. “Interns can be found where the car industry is present. They’re in a lot of industries where the availability of Japanese labour is insufficient.”

Who is responsible for regulating the activities of parties involved in the foreign trainee program?

On the Japanese side, “the Labour Standards Office has regulatory power. Secondary accepting organisations employ staff who are under the labour regulations, but primary accepting organisations are not hiring these workers, [so the Labour Standards Law doesn’t cover their relationship with the interns]. It’s hard for us to make a civil suit against primary accepting organisations because there’s no contract between them and foreign interns.”

Who is supposed to monitor the overseas sending organisations? It seems that responsibility is laid on the governments of their host countries.

Have there been any recommendations for changes to the system?

“Korea has a similar system for foreign workers, but it’s based on bilateral agreements.” This means that, for example, the Vietnamese government may have one of their agencies recruiting for these programs, so there isn’t much room for third party brokers. But in the case of the Japanese system, this duty is left to private organisations rather than governmental organisations. “I think that is making the situation worse,” says Ms. Abiko.

Has anyone proposed switching to a Korean-style system? “The Japanese Federation of Bar Associations released a statement in April (2011) about abolishing this system.” The Japanese government’s response was to say ‘we’ll see how it goes under the 2010 amendment of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act’.

Four of the 13 individuals who have pleaded guilty for their roles in the conspiracy have been sentenced to prison.  On May 10, 2011, Timothy Lee Gentry, 33, of Burlington, Ky., was sentenced to 25 years in prison.  On May 31, 2011, Michael Biggs, 32, of Orlando, Fla., was sentenced to 20 years in prison.  On June 22, 2011, Michael Childs, 49, of Huntsville, Ala., was sentenced to 30 years in prison.  On July 14, 2011, Charles Christian, 49, of Tilton, Ill., was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.  Each defendant also received a lifetime of supervised release following his release from prison as part of their sentence.

Members traded graphic images and videos of adults molesting children 12 years-old and under, often violently. 15 of the arrested Dreamboard members are confirmed to have personally created child pornography. Efforts to locate and identify the victims of sexual abuse and exploitation by Dreamboard members are ongoing.

At a press conference, Attorney General Eric Holder described the “nightmare” scenario.

Some of the children featured in these images and videos were just infants. In many cases, the children being victimized were in obvious and also intentional pain, even in distress and crying, just as the rules for one area of the bulletin board mandated they had to be in distress and crying.

To maintain membership, each person in the Dreamboard group was required to continually upload new images and videos. Those who participated the most were rewarded with VIP or Super VIP status and given access to a larger pool of materials. Posts were organised into cagetories, one of which was “Super Hardcore”:

The only posts permitted were those involving adults having violent sexual intercourse with “very young kids” who were being subjected to both physical and sexual abuse and were obviously “in distress, and or crying.”

2 of the 5 lead administrators of the board have been arrested.

I’m looking forward to reading your comments.

A manager stands up and says “I have a plan.”

Which are you following?

Prevention

• Implementation of stringent landing examinations.
• Patrol of the transit areas in airports.
• Cooperation with embassies in Japan etc.

Protection

• Quick and smooth repatriation assistance to victims who wish to return to their countries.
• Special permission for residence for victims in principle.

Prosecution

• Aggressive measures against the encouragement of illegal work.

The document, which is titled Human Trafficking: The Government’s Strategy, describes the need and intention to tackle traffickers overseas before they have a chance to reach their destination.

Raising the risks to the traffickers and going after their profits must be at the heart of our approach to drive them out of this business and to stop more vulnerable men, women and
children becoming trafficking victims. In particular, this means a greater emphasis on disruption and enforcement activity.

The UK has a National Referral Mechanism for identifying victims of human trafficking (take a look at the NRM referral forms for adults and children) and the strategy clearly states the commitment to improving services for these people.

There is also a clear intention to improve the system for handling trafficked persons and the information supplied to asylum seekers, provide specialised train law enforcement officers and to collaborate with the private sector.

A couple of days ago, I spoke with another friend in Mongolia and she confirmed that such rumours exist in UB and that there are grounds to believe that children have been trafficked.

I’m sorry to say that my hands are rather full right now and I’ll have to wait until I can look into this in more depth.

Next, please watch this video from beginning to end. I’ve been collecting information on the tsunami affected areas and the last update I have for this town, Minami-Sanriku, was on March 31st to say they were still desperate for aid. You can take a look at the street view on Google Maps to see what the town used to look like, and then zoom out to see the latest satellite view. They have a twin-town in Italy called Besano.

If you’d like to see if one of the towns in Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima, Aomori or Ibaraki has a twin near you, please check this site. If you don’t have a sister-city or twin-town in the affected areas, you could adopt one anyway and give them the resources to implement local solutions to local problems.