Photo/Illutration Wishma Sandamali’s sister Poornima, center, and lawyer Shoichi Ibusuki, left, at a news conference in Tokyo on Oct. 5 (Rei Kishitsu)

Video footage of a Sri Lankan detainee being fed by Nagoya immigration officials despite her vomiting confirms that she was mistreated there before her death, an attorney for her bereaved family said Oct. 5.

Immigration Services Agency officials on Oct. 1 showed some of the footage of Wishma Sandamali, 33, who died at a detention facility run by the Nagoya Regional Immigration Services Bureau on March 6, to one of her sisters, Poornima, 27, and the family’s lawyers, the family said.

The Oct. 1 viewing, which lasted for about two and a half hours at the Nagoya District Court, was the first time Poornima was permitted to see footage of her sister’s final days with lawyers for the family present.

The family and their legal team said at an Oct. 5 news conference that the court on Sept. 6 granted their petition to preserve security camera footage of Wishma at the detention facility.

“The footage of Wishma taken on March 3 shows her throwing up immediately after officials (of the Nagoya bureau) fed her with a spoon,” lawyer Chie Komai said at the news conference.

“But officials had her take another bite soon after that and ended up making her vomit again. It is extremely cruel that they tried to feed her despite her difficulty in taking food into her mouth.”

Shoichi Ibusuki, another lawyer for the bereaved family, expressed resentment at officials’ inaction after Wishma’s condition worsened.

“In the footage on March 5 and 6, Wishma didn’t respond to officials who waved their hands in front of her and called her name,” he said. “They helped her sit up, but she couldn’t hold her head up. Why didn’t they immediately call an ambulance?”

Poornima said she was convinced that the video contains information that the final report on her sister’s death failed to mention.

“I can’t sleep well because the footage of my sister keeps occupying my mind,” she said. “I want the agency to disclose the entire video, which will be shocking to the public as well.”

The bereaved family and their lawyers plan to soon sue the government to seek redress for Wishma’s death, which they attribute to the bureau’s mistreatment of her.

The Immigration Services Agency has roughly 295 hours’ worth of video from Feb. 22 through March 6, when Wishma died, kept on 39 DVDs.

The agency also disclosed part of the video footage that had been edited down to just two hours to Poornima and another sister, Wayomi, on Aug. 12. But it had rejected their request to allow the family’s lawyers to watch it with them or provide them with copies of the entire video record.

(This article was written by Rei Kishitsu and Ryuichi Kitano, a senior staff writer.)

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