Child abduction issue forced in Japan
Updated
Tokyo is under international pressure to allow divorced foreign parents access to their children. The issue was thrown into the spotlight when an American man was arrested for snatching his two children from his Japanese ex-wife in the Japanese city of Fukuoka. Japan is the only G7 country that hasn't signed a 1980 convention which obliges countries to return abducted children to their country of residence. Late last week, ambassadors from countries including the United States, Britain and Australia met with Justice Minister Keiko Chiba to press the issue.
Presenter: Joanna McCarthy
Speakers: Colin Jones, professor at Doshisha University; Christopher Savoie, American father arrested for kidnapping; Simon Wood, spokesman, British Embassy in Tokyo
MCCARTHY: 38-year old American man Christopher Savoie says he tried to take his children in an act of desperation. He says his Japanese ex-wife took his children to Japan and refused to let him see them. A Tennessee court issued an arrest warrant for his former wife, Narika, but it carried no legal weight in Japan. In Japan's south western city of Fukuoka Mr Savoie snatched his two children from his ex-wife as they made their way to school. Here he tells American news network CBS what happened next.
SAVOIE: I did run with my daughter in my arms to the consulate door because there was a whole wake of police running after me with shields and batons.
JOURNALIST: In riot gear?
SAVOIE: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
MCCARTHY: Mr Savoie was unable to enter the US consulate and was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping. Prosecutors released him on Thursday without filing charges, but he was forced to leave the country and abide by other conditions.
SAVOIE: Basically I'm not allowed to see them, I'm not even allowed to call them and I'm not even allowed to send them birthday presents.
MCCARTHY: The case prompted from ambassadors from eight countries to take action on an issue that's long been a point of contention in their relations with Tokyo.
WOOD: From Britain's point of view this is an issue that we've been pursuing for a long time.
MCCARTHY: Simon Wood is a spokesman for the British Embassy in Tokyo.
WOOD: The overriding concern we have is for the welfare of the child or children involved. So the arguments we put forward are that these are cases that are causing distress for all concerned that need to have a proper legal framework for dealing with them given the international role that Japan now plays. And we urge Japan both to sign a convention, but also to put in place frameworks to deal with existing cases so that the welfare of the child can be ensured and that appropriate visitation rights for both parents can be enforced where they're granted.
MCCARTHY: And what response did you receive from the Justice Minister?
WOOD: I think the Justice Minister understood the seriousness of the problem and the seriousness of the concerns we were raising.
MCCARTHY: Colin Jones is a US lawyer and professor at Doshisha University in Kyoto. He says that Japan has developed a reputation as a haven for international child abductions.
JONES: I think it's fairly common knowledge that if you get the children back to Japan it's pretty safe. But I think that's really just a reflection of the fact that the same sort of thing happens in domestic custody disputes where possession is nine-tenths of the law, it's pretty much all of the law so that the parent who ends up with the children frequently keeps them and there's very few means of coercing any sort of change to that.
MCCARTHY: There are some signs from Japans' new government that change could be coming. Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada says they're looking at the possibility of signing the Hague Convention, and he believes Japan should consider it proactively. The newly appointed Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama has said in the past he supports signing the convention. But Colin Jones says that bringing about reform won't be easy.
JONES: You have to look at it from the standpoint of the people who deal with the foreign pressure are not the same people who would actually deal with the legislative process and they're not the people who would actually have to implement the treaty, which would involve effectively taking crying children away from crying mothers in some cases. So it's not necessarily a set of results that anybody has interest in bringing about.
- Listen:
- Windows Media
