Virus travel bans separate families even as lockdowns ease
09 June, 2020
When Julie Sergent's father died, she faced an agonizing decision: if she travelled from her home in Japan to wait the funeral in France, she wouldn't be allowed back.
Across Asia, domestic lockdowns imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus are easing, but international travel restrictions in your community remain tight.
Many countries have banned non-citizens from entry as well as closed their borders altogether, with devastating consequences for a few living far from family.
In Japan, citizens can leave and re-enter the united states. Those coming from designated high-risk areas are tested for the virus on arrival and asked to see a quarantine.
But foreign residents, even people that have long-term ties or married to Japanese citizens, cannot do the same.
That put Sergent within an impossible situation when her father died suddenly in April: if she left for France, she'd be stranded there.
"I would lose my job, my apartment, my income for a long time," she said.
The 29-year-old was told she could possibly be able to obtain a humanitarian exemption, but with just two days prior to the funeral, there wasn't time.
"My mother was devastated. I was the only person in the family who couldn't attend my father's funeral," she told AFP.
"My brother and sister described if you ask me how they wrote a note on a little little bit of paper and located it on his jacket. And that was something I couldn't do," she added, her voice cracking.
'There's no person else'
Yukari, who asked to be discovered by her first name only, faces a similar situation.
She is half-American, half-Japanese and lives in Tokyo with her Japanese husband and their nine-year-old son.
But she doesn't have Japanese citizenship and faces being separated from her son and husband if she travels to america, where her mother is battling cancer.
"I'm... [the] only immediate family that she's. There's nobody else... in america," she told AFP.
Her mother was identified as having bile duct cancer in March, and in April her doctor warned she might have just weeks to live.
Ordinarily, Yukari could have taken the first flight out, but instead, she was forced to count on friends of the family to help her mother.
After a touch-and-go period, her mother's health has stabilized, although cancer hasn't gone away.
"I talked to her helpers, and one of these said 'I think she's securing, to see you one more time.' That was hard to hear."
Humanitarian exceptions?
Elsewhere in Asia, the guidelines are even stricter, with countries like Mongolia effectively sealing its borders altogether. Even citizens are just able to re-enter the united states on rare evacuation flights.
That has left people like Nyamtseren Erdenetsetseg and her husband Sukhbaatar Dorj, who are stuck in South Korea, without way back no idea when they will dsicover their children in Mongolia again.
The couple visited South Korea in January to go to Erdenetsetseg's mother, who lives in Seoul. They left their five children with Dorj's mother while they were away.
But on February 23, Mongolia announced it was banning entry from South Korea, leaving the couple stranded.
They tried in vain to obtain a seat on an evacuation flight, and on May 3, Dorj's mother died suddenly.
His sister has taken in the couple's children, who ask their parents on phone calls when they will be back.
"I don't say anything," Erdenetsetseg said. "I don't need to get their hopes up for nothing."
She's even considered allowing her Korean visa to expire rather than extending it, in the hope authorities would deport her. But doing that could mean she'd be banned from South Korea later on.
In some places, there are signs of tentative changes. China has begun relaxing travel caps for some foreign organizations and is increasing the number of international flights.
And in early June, Japan's government said foreign residents now "could be granted" humanitarian exceptions to the ban, potentially offering Yukari an opportunity to see her mother.
"I just pray that... I could go and see her one last time."
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
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