HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Teppei Kasai
Program Officer, Asia Division
February 8, 2024
Asylum Seekers Still Risk Being Returned Home to Harm
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Rohingya asylum seekers disembark from their boat upon landing in Ulee Madon, North Aceh, Indonesia, November 16, 2023. © 2023 Rahmat Mirza/AP Photo
The Nagoya High Court last month ordered the Japanese government to grant refugee status to an ethnic Rohingya asylum seeker from Myanmar. A lower court had previously ruled that 44-year-old Khin Maung Soe was a Rohingya, but that his ethnicity was an insufficient basis for considering him a refugee. The high court found that because the Myanmar military had “committed ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya” since the February 2021 military coup, there “exists objective fact to feel fear of persecution.”