It is a system in which foreigners and mostly African husbands and fathers are getting their children with Japanese women kidnapped and hidden away from them.

In the worst case scenario they end up in an immigration detention facility awaiting deportation if they were on a spouse visa which expired. These men are being treated like a hired gun, who must go his way after the child is born.

This is a practice being carried out by Japanese women who by the time they reach 30, are unable to get married to a Japanese man, so set forth to find an African man knowing fully well that he would be discarded when the time was ripe.

African governments representatives, in Tokyo, like homeland leaders during apartheid in South Africa, look the other way in cases where citizens from Africa come up against the Japanese.

These African governments representatives who should have an inclination to speak up for the rights of their own citizens who reside in Japan legally or not get their tongues tied up on such issues.

They are more concerned with extending the begging bowl for aid which never get to people like the ones whose rights they should speak up for or at least engage the Japanese government diplomatically in order for their hosts to be more sensitive when dealing the rights of poor Africans in Japan.

In general the success of African ambassadors in Japan is judged in accordance with how much aid they have negotiated so it doesn’t do to step on the toes of benefactors.

Not even the ambassadors of countries whose presidents are vocal on the international scene on the rights of Africans, such as Zimbabwe or whose constitutions speak equality such as South Africa, promote the dignity of the Africans in general, want to engage the Japanese to protect or promote the rights of Africans.

No African authority such as the African Union considers it their duty to uplift the human rights of Africans in any way whatsoever in countries such as Japan or in the diaspora in general. Race like class is being buried alive.

Instead African ambassador in Japan whisper even in their own offices at their embassies about engaging the Japanese government ministers over the treatment of Africans in Japan.

As a result African ambassadors are complicit in the trampling of the rights of Africans both in their own countries African and in foreign lands.

The difference to being ordered to perform hara-kiri is very small compared to what the Japanese did to Ghanaian Issahr Glover Al-Kasheed.. Hara-kiri according to the concise oxford dictionary is, "ritual suicide by disembowelment with a sword, formerly practiced in Japan by samurai as an honorable alternative to disgrace or execution"

That’s what happened to Ghanaian Issahr Glover Al- Kasheed.. He was told sign divorce papers, see your wife for the last time and get deported. That was the honorable thing to do unless he wanted to be removed from the Nagoya Immigration Detention Centre to Ibaraki Detention Facility, for hardened criminals.

The process for Ibaraki starts with manhandling like an animal then treated like a criminal, tortured and handcuffed before being delivered like a sack in a place where hardened criminals are taken.

Issahr refused to perform the equivalent of hara-kiri so he was disgraced. This is a tale not so much of the disgrace but of Third World like violation of his human rights.

As the Ghanaian man sat in his Nagoya Immigration Centre cell pondering his situation so far away from home, he shook his head, not comprehending. It was just before dinner time. Just then a tray was pushed into his cell. In it were a rice bowl, a soup bowl, fried fish and chop sticks. All decent looking.

"Arigato" he said, thank you in Japanese as the gruff turn-key shuffled off on his rounds.

He was in Nagoya Immigration Detention Facility.

He was a guest of the Justice ministry. This was an unreal situation.

On the 2^{nd of February, 1997, he flew from Kotoka International Airport on Accra, Ghana aboard Alitalia flight Az 790 headed for Kansai, Osaka. His papers were in order. He had been granted a visa to enter Japan as a spouse of a Japanese national.}

How had things changed so much, that inside six years he was now awaiting deportation?

It all started with his marriage to Chieko Yukioka, who hails from Osaka Fu. They got married in Accra, in the African sun. The year was 1996.

When they got married Chieko was 30 years old. Well above the age of majority. She was of sound mind. They loved each other. Their son Bilal was born in 1998, but not in Japan. The child was born at the Staten Island University Hospital, New York.

Their intention in having the child born in the United States was to give him a chance with one of three nationalities, Ghanaian, Japanese and USA.

Now the Ghananian, Issahr Glover Al-Kasheed told Afro Rights Committee in Asia (ARCA) about why he thought he was taken to Ibaraki Prison and why the Japanese ministry of Justice wanted to deport him.

Even though his wife Chieko was able to make her own decisions about whom she could marry and proceeded to exercise that free will as long as she was outside Japan, as soon as she returned she became bound by Japanese cultural demands.

Issahr’s parents in law, the mother, Eiko and Tadashi Yukioka of Aza Ishikawa, Taketoyo Cho-Chita Gun, Aichi prefecture rejected the marriage.

They used a Japanese cultural understanding of rejecting foreigners called "uchi no soto" or insiders and outsiders.

They objected to their daughters marriage to an outsider and sought to make sure that the marriage would be destroyed.

If the marriage couldn’t be destroyed by poisoning their daughters mind, then they would and did use the legal and bureaucratic system to create conditions necessary for the deportation of Issahr.

In order to do this they use the Family Courts, District High Courts to force through demands by "insiders" about and against an "outsider". Court officials will always do what the "insider" demands whether it is just or unjust.

This then is the situation the Ghanaian found himself facing.

The "uchi" no "soto" system is a very powerful system. It is about Japanese-ness and national power. If the Japanese turn against you as a foreigner, you cannot win.

The Yukiokas hired lawyers to make sure that the Nagoya Immigration Bureau where Issahr had sent his application for an extension of his spouse visa rejected it on the grounds that the marriage was no longer binding.

His first mistake however was that he was four days late in getting his visa re-newed. That is a no-no to Japanese immigration bureaucracy. Such a situation requires a whole new bureaucratic solution.

Someone on a spouse visa has got to endure hours and hours of waiting and interrogation, sitting together with your Japanese spouse, the Japanese immigration officials are eager to send you back where you come from.

If they detect the slightest tension in your marriage they exploit it to their advantage and to the foreigner’s disadvantage.

Now Issahr’s situation was exacerbated by the conspiracy against him which his parents in law had put in motion.

Taking advantage of the fact that his application was late, they used lawyers to make representations to the Nagoya Immigration claiming that Issahr and their daughter Chieko were now divorced.

Since the strength and basis of his visa was his marriage such a claim is taken very seriously by the Japanese immigration, particularly coming from one’s mother and father in law.

The Yukiokas had seized his wife and kidnapped his son and moved them away to some unknown place. He was denied access to them until he signed divorce papers.

It was obvious that the Yukiokas had been plotting against Issahr for a long time. After they seized his wife Chieko and son Bilal, the in laws told him they were against the fact that he doesn’t pork and the fact that he had asked his wife to breast feed the child.

His father in law Tadashi Yukioka told him he couldn’t have access to his wife and child until his mother in law Eiko Yukioka decided on whether he could see his wife and or child.

That was before they got him arrested. It was also before they brought him before the Nagoya Family Court demanding divorce.

At the Family Court hearing the Yukiokas were not there. Instead an Old Japanese man in his 60s sitting together with two Japanese women in their 50s told him you earn 10 000 yen the equivalent of US$100 a day and that is not enough to look after their daughter.

His son was for all intents and purposes kidnapped.

At a second hearing of the Family Court, Chieko was called into the court and was given 20 minutes to speak after which she was removed from the court.

With his spouse visa expired Issahr was fair game for both immigration and Family Court officials as long as the issue for his deportation was being pushed by the Yukiokas.

The Yukioka lawyers presented gifts termed, "onegaishi masu" or plea gifts to Nagoya immigration officials, pleading for Issahr’s deportation. In any other country this is called a bribe.

The Nagoya Immigration soon made its verdict while Issahr was under forcible detention.

With his fate sealed the humiliation continued.

Dead insects were thrown into the "soy source and ocha" soy source and tea. When he reported the matter the officer on duty claimed this wasn’t a hotel saying in Japanese "Shoga nai" "koko wa hotel ja nai"

Dead worms and insects were again in rice. Issahr then found himself having difficult sleeping with huge headaches, stomach pains and sometimes blood running through his nose. He suspects he was being slowly poisoned.

But his ordeal was far from over.

A Nagoya immigration official visited him in his cell and offered to take him to his house, where he could pack stuff into a 20kg bag, after which he would buy him a ticket and deport him to Ghana.

When he refused he started to continually receive food contaminated with dead flies and other insects. When he complained that’s when they told him they were now going to take him to Ibaraki Immigration Centre by force.

Then one morning, 15 immigration officials entered his cell, sent out all other inmates attached Issahr by kicking his legs and after he fell down they seized his hands, neck and pinned him to the ground. One seized his nose preventing him from bvreathing for some seconds. Some were beating him behind his head and his hands were held in big hook belts as they shouted, "We got you, we got you"

Ibaraki is where who do not have any other chance of redemption are taken and there they await deportation.

Issahr was then bundled and packed into a minibus before being driven to Ibaraki Immigration Centre.

"I have been humiliated, molested, abused and refused my human rights in this society without any cause or reason, just because I’m an African and this has been done by law enforcement authorities" laments Issahr.

For an obvious reason his wife Chieko visited him at Ibaraki, knowing fully well that he wouldn’t released no matter what since "uchi" no "soto" had been enforced. An immigration officer told Chieko, "There is nothing that can be done to get your husband out of our hands. Whats left is to deport him".

Issahr continues about Japan, "This place is hell. There is no honesty, morality, sense of human fairness and justice at all. Its all mind games and a bunch of liars, treating us like animals. Why should immigration force me to divorce my wife? Why should the Family Court refuse me to see my child? Why should the courts decide my family should be wrecked without any cross-examination or proof of any evidence? Its simple discrimination and "uchi" no "soto" way of doing things.

"Here in the Ibarakai Centre I have seen and heard about many Brazilians, Peruvians and selected foreigners with criminal records, some have been jailed but did not face deportation. I have been refused to appear at my own trial. None of my witnesses have been invited. There is no proof about their fabricated evidence. Its just the practice of human rights abuses against me in order to enforce the kidnapping of my son."

All what these immigration officials were doing was to enforce "uchi" no "soto" provisions worked long back when the Yukiokas first hatched the plan to get rid of their son in law.