Foreigners on a two-week hunger strike over conditions at immigration detention centers in Japan have ended their protest in the hope their decision would bring better treatment, but an official said on Thursday there would be no change in policies.<\/b>
\nForeigners on a two-week hunger strike over conditions at immigration detention centers in Japan have ended their protest in the hope their decision would bring better treatment, but an official said on Thursday there would be no change in policies.
Activists and inmates say poor conditions in Japan’s immigration detention centers have led to serious mental health problems and the death of inmates. Since 2006,13 people have died, most recently in March.
About 20 men at the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau went on hunger strike on May 9 to object against their repeated detention and what they called inhumane treatment, activists and detainees said.
At its peak, about 100 detainees, including asylum seekers and some inmates at an immigration facility in Nagoya, southwest of Tokyo, were on hunger strike, they said.
But the last of the strikers began eating this week because they had reached their physical limits and because they wanted to see if authorities would respond positively after their protest gained media coverage.
\u00ab\u00a0Detainees at the Tokyo immigration center ended their hunger strike as their mental, physical and health conditions worsened, \u00a0\u00bb Mitsuru Miyasako, head of the activist group the Provisional Release Association, told a news conference.
\u00ab\u00a0They felt they were reaching their physical limits … They also wanted to see if the immigration authorities would change after their fight got widely reported by media.\u00a0\u00bb
Shigeki Otsuki, a justice ministry official overseeing immigration detention, confirmed the hunger strike had ended and said authorities were already doing what they could to improve conditions.<\/p>\n