Photo/Illutration Wishma Sandamali’s sister Wayomi speaks at a news conference in Nagoya on June 8. Seated to her right is her sister Poornima. (Kazuhiro Nagashima)

NAGOYA--A sibling of a Sri Lankan woman who died while in detention for overstaying her visa urged immigration authorities to rethink their attitudes about people incarcerated for such relatively minor offenses during the first court hearing here in a damages suit over her death.

“I want the Immigration Services Agency to change itself for the sake of all foreigners and Japanese,” Wishma Sandamali’s sister Wayomi, 29, told the Nagoya District Court on June 8. “I believe the court will make a right decision in this case and that will prompt Japan to become a country that treats people with respect.”

The bereaved family filed a lawsuit with the court in March, seeking 156 million yen ($1.16 million) in compensation from the government.

According to the lawsuit, Wishma, 33, died March 6, 2021, after her health deteriorated rapidly in January that year while she was being held at an immigration facility operated by the Nagoya Regional Immigration Services Bureau.

The family accused the immigration authorities of failing to provide Wishma with proper medical treatment, which they assert could have saved her life.

Wayomi spent 15 or so minutes speaking to the court through an interpreter about her anguish over her sister’s death.

She said she came to Japan with another sister, Poornima, 27, in May last year to see the body of Wishma, the oldest of the three.

Wayomi last met Wishma in June 2017, when she, her mother and Poornima saw off Wishma at an airport in Sri Lanka ahead of her flight to Japan to study here.

Wayomi said she could not bear to look at the body of her older sister, who she described as looking worn out as if she was a different person.

Wayomi also recalled that when she was allowed to see security camera footage in August 2021 capturing Wishma’s final days, she threw up out of shock and could not watch it to the end.

“No more people should suffer such a tragedy like Wishma and our family did,” Wayomi said as she choked up with tears.

The government side called for the suit to be dismissed, but did not offer counterarguments to shore up its case.

It said it would consider expressing an opinion about a request filed with the court by the bereaved family that the government submit the entire video record of Wishma in detention.

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