Photo/Illutration Lawyer Chie Komai holds up a Japanese-English dictionary used by the 33-year-old Sri Lankan woman. (Haruka Ono)

Supporters of a Sri Lankan woman who died while being held in detention for overstaying her visa are demanding answers after the release of an interim report failed to establish the cause of her death more than a month ago.

The Immigration Services Agency released its interim report on April 9 but said it still had not determined why the 33-year-old woman died. A final report will be released following a thorough autopsy, officials said.

“More than a month has passed and they still do not know the cause of death,” a woman who had known the deceased since they were 8 years old said at an April 9 news conference in Nagoya. “How long do we have to wait?”

The delay means that funeral services have yet to be held, the woman said, adding that Immigration Services Agency officials had handed over the belongings of her late friend.

She said the woman’s mother was is such shock over her daughter’s death that she is unable to work.

Members of START, a Nagoya-based group that helps foreign nationals in distress, said there were discrepancies between the contents of the interim report and their own contact with the woman.

“I feel the contents of the report are arbitrary,” said Yasunori Matsui, 66, a START official.

The interim report said the woman was seen by doctors after she began vomiting from about January. The woman arrived in Japan in June 2017 on a student visa, but began working instead of attending school.

In August 2020, she was handed a deportation order and placed in a facility operated by the Nagoya Regional Immigration Services Bureau.

The woman originally said she wanted to return to Sri Lanka, but changed her mind after meeting with START members.

The woman was seen by doctors at the detention facility as well as outside after she began vomiting and experiencing numbness from about mid-January.

A gastric camera exam showed nothing wrong and doctors found nothing unusual about the numbness.

While the woman ate the meals provided by the facility as well as sweets and juice she bought herself, she refused to take the prescribed medicine. Her condition worsened from early January and she required help by facility staff to use the restroom and shower.

After a doctor at the facility suspected problems with the woman’s autonomic nervous system, she was seen by a psychiatrist at an outside hospital on March 4. A CT scan of her brain found nothing wrong. She was prescribed with antipsychotic drugs and began taking the medicine.

However, from about noon March 6 she slowly stopped moving while lying down and her death was confirmed at a hospital at 3:25 p.m.

Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa said at an April 9 news conference that the interim report was released because it was important to present the facts of the case as soon as possible.

“I believe a judgment about how (the facility) dealt with the woman should be conducted only after conclusions have been reached about the cause of death,” Kamikawa added.

(This article was compiled from reports by Kazuya Ito and Haruka Ono.)

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