Security camera footage shows Wishma Sandamali lying on a bed at the Nagoya Regional Immigration Services Bureau facility. It follows her last moments from Feb. 22 to March 6, 2021, the day she died. (Provided by the bereaved family’s legal team)

Photo/Illutration Wishma Sandamali’s sisters Wayomi, right, and Poornima speak to reporters in Tokyo in December 2022, holding DVDs that contain video footage submitted by the government as evidence. (Toshinari Takahashi)

What is the price of human dignity? What fundamental honor must be accorded to every individual?

These core questions made me fold my arms in rumination as I listened to exchanges between the government and the legal team representing the bereaved family of Wishma Sandamali, a Sri Lankan woman who died at the Nagoya Regional Immigration Services Bureau’s detention facility two years ago.

The issue in contention was segments of the facility’s security camera footage that were disclosed by Sandamali’s surviving sisters and their legal team at a news conference last week. The footage had been submitted as evidence to the Nagoya District Court and is set to be screened at the court in June and July.

The video showed a dying and visibly debilitated Sandamali begging detention center staffers, “Please let me have an IV drip at the hospital.” But the staffers not only ignored her pleas, some also even kept bantering among themselves.

It was a truly heartbreaking scene that I wished I could banish from my mind. I imagine some people must have seen it on the TV news.

But Justice Minister Ken Saito has raised objections to public disclosure of the video, citing “problems from the standpoint of the deceased’s honor and dignity.” Saito even went so far as to say that if he were Sandamali, he “would not wish the footage to be disclosed.”

What? The justice minister must have forgotten something, namely, that it was none other than the Nagoya immigration services bureau that created this tragedy in the first place.

I cannot believe that Saito of all people, who heads the organizational totem pole in question, would even dare question the victim’s “dignity” in the context of his own choosing.

It was no surprise that Sandamali’s sisters reacted with anger, noting, “Had the immigration authorities taken our sister’s dignity seriously, she would not have died.”

The Diet on April 13 started deliberating on the Revised Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Bill.

But without a clear understanding of the facts that led to Sandamali’s death, I don’t believe the Diet will be capable of any deep, meaningful discourse on how best to fix the nation’s exclusionist immigration system that has traditionally treated undocumented foreign nationals inhumanely and caused the problem of over-extended detention periods for them.

Who are the parties minimizing Sandamali’s human dignity? Are they her lawyers or the immigration authorities?

The justice minister must really think about this.

--The Asahi Shimbun, April 15

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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