Around 150 people including asylum applicants, lawyers and supporters gathered Saturday in a park in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, to protest the forced detention and deportation of people seeking asylum.

The Tanabata Campaign, cohosted by the 1435 Rainbow Bridge Committee and Amnesty International Japan, took its theme from the July 7 Star Festival, which celebrates the annual reunion of two lovers on that day.

Lawyer Kanae Doi, one of the event's representatives, said this theme was chosen to highlight the plight of asylum applicants and immigrants in Japan who have been separated from their families due to detention or deportation.

"Families should not be separated at any cost," Doi said. "We must try to make Japan a country built on the coexistence of Japanese people and foreigners."

Makoto Teranaka, secretary general of Amnesty International Japan, expressed concern over heightened security measures put into place following the bombings Thursday in London.

"I am afraid (the government) will use (the London attacks) as an excuse to take severe measures against foreigners," he said. After the live event, the participants paraded through Shibuya holding bamboo branches with messages written on strips of paper called "tanzaku," in the tanabata tradition, to spread the theme of "no separation among family members."

The messages, such as "I want to see my dad" and "(I) hope that people can all live happily regardless of their nationalities or ethnicity," were written by people seeking asylum, detainees and supporters. They wrote 1,435 of the missives, a number organizers said is equivalent to the average number of foreigners detained daily throughout Japan.

One Myanmarese seeking asylum broke down as she spoke at Saturday's event of how she spends sleepless nights thinking about her husband, who has been detained since January at the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau.

"Why must a family be split into two?" she asked. "It tears my heart when my child asks when daddy will come home, and I have no answer."