The Japanese authorities, through the voice of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yoshimasa Hayashi, launched a solemn appeal to the population to put an end to xenophobic behavior vis-à-vis the Russians. In recent days, the country nevertheless considers that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is now preventing further discussions for a possible peace treaty with Russia over the Kuril Islands.
” Get out: go back to your country! », « The accomplices of the genocidaires have nothing to do in Japan! », « Die ! “. Diyana receives these kinds of messages every day as she tells Bruno Duval, RFI correspondent in Tokyo.
” I counted: more than 300 people constantly harass me on Twitter. No matter how much I say and repeat on my YouTube channel that I am against this war, I am insulted all day long. It’s sad. And that scares me, of course…“, she confides.
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Discrimination, intimidation, threats
Anonymous threatening letters, insulting or silent phone calls, this is also what Daya and her mother, Anastasia, suffer: “ This aggressiveness is insane: we are part of an association helping Ukrainians who have found refuge in Japan! It’s mostly for my two-year-old daughter that I’m actually scared. I am afraid that if this anti-Russian climate continues, she will end up becoming a whipping boy in the crèche. “.
A hotel has posted on its front door that it now refuses Russian customers. A major train station in Tokyo has concealed all signposts in Cyrillic, fearing they will cause… “undue emotional discomfort” to Japanese commuters. And in the capital, the window of a Russian restaurant was vandalized. Two years ago, a wave of xenophobia swept through Japan. At the time, Sinophobic acts and remarks had multiplied. Because the first Covid-19 patients identified in the country were all Chinese immigrants.
Tokyo toughens the tone with Moscow
In its annual diplomatic “Blue Book” published this Friday, April 22, the country again considers that four small islands north of the Archipelago are ” busy by Russia. Invaded by the Soviet army in the very last days of the Second World War in August 1945, then annexed by Moscow, these islands called “Northern Territories” by Tokyo are, according to this official document Japanese territories over which Japan has the right of sovereignty, but which are currently illegally occupied by Russia »
►Also read: The Kuril Islands, the impossible agreement between Moscow and Tokyo