Ethnic minorities and other socially vulnerable members of Japanese society gathered Wednesday to relate their stories of racial discrimination to embassy representatives in an effort to raise global awareness of their plight and fight racism.

Organized by a union of more than 80 anti-discrimination and human-rights groups nationwide, Wednesday's event invited about 20 embassy representatives based in Japan, including those from the United States, France, Belgium and the Philippines. The group's mission: brief embassy representatives on the reality of racial discrimination in the country, something they claim remains virtually unknown.

Minorities who appeared at Wednesday's event included members of various ethnic groups such as Ainu indigenous people from Hokkaido and ethnic Koreans, as well as economically disadvantaged people from the outcast buraku community. Immigrants from countries such as the Philippines and Brazil also took part.

The event was held in part to commemorate March 21, designated by the United Nations as International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

A 20-year-old ethnic Korean student from Korea University in Tokyo, for one, lamented that Japan has excluded the nation's Korean high schools from the state-sponsored tuition-waiver program that all other high schools in the country are eligible for.

The exclusion, officially greenlighted by the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2013, signals "unreasonable and blatant" racial discrimination, the student said.

Another ethnic Korean resident, Song Hyesuk, said the recent rise in hate speech targeting her compatriots has terrorized children studying at her local Korean school so much that they have grown less willing to speak Korean in public for fear of a backlash.

Despite Japan's 1995 agreement to a U.N.-designated anti-racism convention, the government has passed no legislation to prohibit racial discrimination or hate speech.

"It would be progress if there was such a law," a representative from one European embassy said after the event.

"It's important to have a law in place in order to educate the public on what is allowed and what is not allowed. If you don't have a law, you can't do anything."

Meanwhile Cherry Lyn Pangilinan, a Philippine national and long-term resident in Japan, spoke of her experience being subjected to physical violence and racial slurs by her Japanese husband.