Arfiya Eri is a young multilingual woman and former UN official, all of which would help her stand out as a Japanese political candidate except that she is also of Uighur heritage.
While her campaign is not centered on her ethnic background, it is attracting attention — positive and negative — in a country where politics is still a mostly homogenous affair.
Ethnic Uighurs generally hail from China’s Xinjiang region, where the government is accused of detaining more than 1 million of them and other Muslim minorities in a years-long crackdown that rights groups say includes widespread “crimes against humanity.”
Photo: AFP
Eri, 33, is running for the Japanese House of Councilors, the lower house of the National Diet, with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), on a platform that emphasizes bread-and-butter issues and her identity as a proud Japanese citizen.
As the first person of Uighur origin to run as a major party candidate in Japan, Eri said that her campaign is viewed by some through the prism of her family history.
“Instead of my vision and policies as a Japanese politician, people ask me about the Uighur issue because of my ethnic background,” she said. “I can understand why this happens, but it feels a bit strange.”
However, that does not mean that diversity is not a concern for a woman who speaks seven languages and was educated in Japan, China and the US.
It helped inspire her to run, after she watched an election in her native Fukuoka region in southern Japan and observed the uniformity of the candidates.
“I see more and more people like myself visibly represented in Japan, with names that are not traditionally Japanese,” said Eri, whose family name is sometimes mistaken for her first name.
“Women are also more visibly active and successful... But when you look at the world of politics, that diversity is still not being represented, it’s not reflected,” she added.
Japan’s July 10 election will see more than 500 candidates running for half of the 248-seat House of Councilors.
The LDP is expected to win, although Eri’s chances will be partly dictated by where she is eventually placed on the party list.
She plans to campaign for better work-life balance, gender equality and amending the pacifist constitution, which bars the use of force to settle international disputes and is interpreted by some as prohibiting the country from having any military force.
Eri endorses the LDP’s mainstream conservative politics, and insists Japan must “stand firm on our national security.”
Eri also declines to use the name Xinjiang for China’s Uighur-majority region, and said her familiarity with alleged human rights abuses has shaped her views.
The candidate described “human rights violations at an unspeakable scale in places like the Uighur region,” and said she believes even a minor rights violation “opens the door” to worse abuses.
Eri’s family moved from Japan to China when she was a teenager, after her father, an engineer, was transferred by his employer.
She graduated from an American international school before studying in the US, and joined the UN in 2016 after a stint at the Bank of Japan.
Her international resume sets her apart from many election candidates, but “rather than my actual experiences and expertise or who I really am, my background has drawn more attention,” she said.
Much of that has been positive, but there has also been online vitriol questioning Eri’s identity, her trustworthiness and even her patriotism.
Candidates such as Eri have little to gain from putting their diversity front and center in mostly mono-ethnic Japan, said Tomoaki Iwai, professor emeritus of Japanese politics at Nihon University.
They “can face an adverse voter reaction if they push their ethnicity too much,” he said, adding that things are beginning to change, especially in urban areas, but the pace is gradual.
Eri said Japan must “build a country that embraces diversity,” although she said that there is a long way to go, including in the LDP.
“I believe that this is vital for the future of Japan,” she said.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
‘SIGNS OF ESCALATION’: Russian forces have been aiming to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas province and have been capturing new villages as they move toward Pokrovsk Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi on Saturday said that Ukraine faced increasing difficulties in its fight against Moscow’s invasion as Russian forces advance and North Korean troops prepare to join the Kremlin’s campaign. Syrskyi, relating comments he made to a top US general, said outnumbered Ukrainian forces faced Russian attacks in key sectors of the more than two-and-a-half-year-old war with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a nightly address said that Ukraine’s military command was focused on defending around the town of Kurakhove — a target of Russia’s advances along with Pokrovsk, a logistical hub to the north. He decried strikes
RSS