The bereaved family of a Sri Lankan woman who died in detention at an immigration facility in Japan in 2021 will file a lawsuit seeking the disclosure of all security camera footage leading up to her death, the family's lawyers said Thursday.
The Japanese immigration authorities rejected a call for releasing additional footage of Ratnayake Liyanage Wishma Sandamali in a decision dated March 26, and her family plans to challenge the decision at the Tokyo District Court possibly in May.
At a press conference in Tokyo, younger sister Wayomi, 32, said through an interpreter that she wants to know why her otherwise healthy sister suddenly died, expressing dissatisfaction with the decision not to release the footage.
Wishma's 30-year-old sister Poornima, who participated online, said her bereaved family had a right to the footage.
Lawyer Shoichi Ibusuki said, "It is grossly unfair to refuse the release of the footage, which shows an official's actions in the line of duty and should not be problematic to disclose."
Wishma died in March 2021 at the age of 33 while being held at a facility of the Nagoya Regional Immigration Services Bureau. She came to Japan in 2017 as a student but was taken into custody in August 2020 for overstaying her visa.
She complained of ill health, which included vomiting and stomachaches, for around a month during detainment, and her death sparked national outrage over her treatment.
Wishma's family is separately seeking damages from the government over her death, alleging she was illegally detained and died due to a lack of necessary medical care.
A five-hour-long video clip out of 295 hours of security camera footage was submitted by the Japanese government in the damages suit and aired in court in June and July of 2023. Wishma's family has sought the rest of the footage.
Some of the released footage taken less than two weeks before her death showed Wishma lying on a bed and begging officers to take her to a hospital after telling them she could not move or eat.
The footage also included later scenes of an officer and nurse cheerfully chatting while tending to Wishma as she moaned in pain.
In an excerpt from the day she was confirmed dead, an officer tried to wake an unresponsive Wishma after reporting over an intercom that her fingertips felt cold.
The immigration authorities refused to disclose the rest of the footage, saying it may "interfere with public safety and the maintenance of order" by revealing information about the operation of security systems.
© KYODO
26 Comments
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Hawk
Or that it could reveal gross negligence, abuse and ill-treatment contributing to - or causing - her death.
Blacksamurai
Time to drop this - obviously somebody else is paying for this legal case and lawyer. What happened to that Sri Lankan woman is tragic but Japan's way of looking at it is yes, there is failure of duty of care in the detention center and there needs to be accountability. However, Wishma committed an immigration crime by wilfully over stayng her visa for narly 3 years.
Her choices were very bad - instead of heading off home when her visa was coming to an end she moved prefectures and then lived with a man she said was violent. Again, a terrible thing but all these complications happened because she chose to stay in Japan illegally which is a significant immigration crime here regardless of what others like to say. If she supposedly.
As for the assertion some put up that she had no money to go home which is why she overstayed - doesn't make sense. No money to go home but you can live in Japan illegally? When you look at all the travelling her parents and siblings have done pursuing this case, it shows us that they could have paid for a cheap one way ticket for their daughter to come home. Bad choices can have fatal consequences and Japan isn't going to drop its laws for foreign law breakers. Safer being responsible and following a country's laws anywhere in the world.
Mr Kipling
Will that include the footage of her refusing to return to Sri Lanka?
IMadeAnAccountJustForThis
If you detain someone then you are required to look after their well-being. If this is not the case, then any people being detained would not be provided with food and shelter. She couldn't leave and look for a doctor because she was detained. Therefore immigration must take on the RESPONSIBILITY of looking after her.
Yes she overstayed her visa. Then the courts need to get a shuffle on and deport her.
What we've seen from immigration about this case is a lot of dodging responsibility. Disgusting.
Over staying a visa isn't a crime worthy of death.
factchecker
They won't be getting it. They're not Japanese.
GuruMick
If someone is taken into custody the duty of care to look after that person lies with the state agency holding her.
No ifs, no buts.
People dont deserve to die because they overstayed their visa.
I would say we are looking at an institutional problem where neglect, even cruelty are accepted and acknowledged in the Department of Immigration custodial division.
Finally, why wasnt she deported earlier ?
Need an open reaching enquiry by outside judicial agencies to cross examine workers in immigration to understand what is the Departmental ethos.
NZ
normally I expect that Japan provides full footage if incident.
as long as have nothing to hide and did not do anything wrong?
just basic common sense.
Futaro Gamagori
She was being sent back to Sri Lanka but she refused and forced herself to stay in Japan
That is why she was held in the facility
She wasn't detained detained if you know what i mean
She could have left Japan anytime she wanted
moonwatcher
the usual blame the victim comments. if you can't understand why it's wrong, try thinking about it for the rest of your life. maybe you'll figure it out. doubt it.
quercetum
@Blacksamurai
The issue isn't a visa overstay, is it?
Futaro Gamagori
Not making excuses for whatever Japan has done wrong
Just saying she (and the family) could've done something to prevent this
Can't help someone who refuses help
GuruMick
People get forcibly returned to their country of origin...usually means a man on either side, handcuffs and boarding before other passengers.
Speed
Yes, however, it doesn't warrant a death penalty.
The immigration's refusal to hand over footage doesn't make sense unless they are hiding something. There's nothing that can be seen that ""interferes with public safety and the maintenance of order." That's absolute nonsense. I'd also be highly suspicious if I were this family.
Hawk
As somewhat of a counterpoint - which in no way excuses deliberately overstaying, 'I know a person who' worked here for over a year on the wrong type of visa. Just a complete oversight on 'that person's' part, having not changed visa status after changing jobs, and would have continued had their, at the time, wrong visa not come up for renewal.
Upon realising, they went straight to the immigration office to sort it out. It turned out to be not a problem but it could have gone the other way under different circumstances I suppose.
enmaai
She tried to apply for a provisional release but she was denied because you need a Japanese guarantor
enmaai
and a bail money about ¥250,000 and a legal address. btw the guarantor also have to submit their one year tax payments and other legal documents.
Mr Kipling
If I remember correctly, she came here to "study" but ended up working illegally.
There was no death penalty. She died of natural causes in a facility she could have left to return to Sri Lanka.
Is life in Sri Lanka so bad that a Japanese detention center is better or was she getting poor advice?
Jonathan Prin
She tries the system, she failed.
Yes the japanese detention authorities are cruel.
Yes the law is not fully applicable in such detzntion center.
Yes she could have anytime left Japan.
Yes the persons in charge of her detention made a mistake.
Message is sent to foreigners, those who especially have no connection with Japan, don’t come and mess with us and our country.
I prefer this message than the other one in Europe where crime has skyrocketed.
Alas for this tragic ending for her, it is the whole judicial system in Japan which is outdated. Know the country you go to before coming uninvited.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Are you certain the Japanese authorities would have allowed her to exit this century with a plane ticket she paid for?
Chief -Tariffs
What a sad ending, two wrongs doesn't make it right. And yes it's illegal to overstay our visas but it's also wrong not to provide medical help in a timely manner to someone in need regardless of visa status that's what human rights are about " humanity".
Mr Kipling
Yes, that is how the system works. She was fighting to stay, trying to play the system but sadly it didn't turn out very well for anyone.
Moral of the story... get the right visa and follow the rules.
Matt
Regardless of whatever visa law someone has broken, death is not an outcome that is acceptable in a modern developed country. Shame on Japan's authorities for their negligence and lack of care for human beings.
Blacksamurai
As usual some here are asserting that others are 'victim blaming' and the entire point is only that this detention center's staff's neglect led to the unnecessary death of this lady.
The others here are pointing out that nobody on this topic is condoning any abuse of power, neglect of detainees and failure to deliver adequate medical care as a key part of this Immigration Detention Center's responsibility. Its legal duty of care. We are saying that Wishma's death was so needless in two basic ways.
The first is her failure to follow Immigration laws and return home when her visa was cancelled and she was refused an extension which led to her deliberate overstay and then detention The second is the failure of this center in Aichi to follow its legal obligations to detainees and to ensure all its staff carry out their duties correctly without any prejudice and with accountability.
But the bad choices were made by Wishma herself. It seems she was doing what some international students do in some of the developed countries they study in - focus on working rather than studying, usually outside the rules.
Her visa was likely cancelled because her focus wasn't study and the authorities found out. She probably didn't have the necessary funds to continue study as the main focus of her residency in Japan but that's one of the requirements for being able to continue as a student in Japan. And elsewhere. And going on the lam and avoiding the system after her permission to stay ran out was her choice. She chose the wrong country to break the laws governing her stay.
Blacksamurai
And people saying that if Wishma did all that as a white European she'd be fine have zero knowledge of Japanese Immigration Law and the system. As far back as the year 2,000 the J Immigration Law was changed to get tougher and there have been even more changes made over the last two decades. I've known a few white westerners who overstayed their visas,one even got a lawyer in one case but had to go and were banned from Japan for a number of years.
The difference between these foreigners and other foreigners regardless of ethnicity/nationality and Wishma is that they went to the Immigration Office with their ID, said they made a mistake, apologised and were not detained pending Immigration's action. When Immigration told them they had to leave they bought a one way ticket and went again to the Immigration Office to show it. They signed documents saying they had overstayed and understood they had broken Japanese law and were prohibited from entering Japan in any way for a set number of years.
Wishma basically tried to go undetected by the system and didn't contact Immigration that way. She couldn't afford a lawyer but neither could a couple of those foreigners I mentioned. She didn't front up at the Immigration Office until she left a foreign male she'd been living with unregistered at the address, and then said she was a victim of domestic violence.
Even then if she had said at Immigration she would return to Sri Lanka as soon as possible and signed a document saying she had broken Japanese law by overstaying, would purchase a one way ticket and acknowledged she would not be able to enter Japan again for a certain amount of time, the odds are she would not have been detained. Her parents could have sent her the money for a one way ticket by Western Union or another service like that if Wishma's bank account had been frozen They could have sent her funds for cheap accommodation until her leaving date.
Some people on here don't understand that Japan doesn't want to detain overstayers - it wants them to return home and expects them to demonstrate they can and will do this seriously. Wishma did not prioritise this and it ended up horribly.
kurisupisu
.
Japan is a trustworthy country,transparent and under the rule of law, isn’t it?
Apparently not….
travelbangaijin
I saw her photos and she was a very beautiful young woman radiating a warm soul - it is disgusting video how she looked in that prison facility