The Japanese government yesterday apologized to tens of thousands of victims forcibly sterilized under a now-defunct Eugenics Protection Law, which was designed to “prevent the birth of poor-quality descendants,” and promised to pay compensation.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that he was offering “sincere remorse and heartfelt apology” to the victims.
It came after the parliament earlier in the day enacted legislation to provide redress measures, including ￥3.2 million (US$28,600) compensation for each victim.
An estimated 25,000 people were given unconsented sterilization while the 1948 law was in place until 1996.
The law allowed doctors to sterilize people with disabilities. It was quietly renamed the Maternity Protection Law in 1996, when the discriminatory condition was removed.
The redress legislation acknowledges that many people were forced to have operations to remove their reproductive organs or radiation treatment to get sterilized, causing them tremendous pain mentally and physically.
Japanese Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Takumi Nemoto said that as head of the department in charge of the compensation, he would do his utmost to provide the one-time redress money for the entitled recipients, many of them aging and handicapped, as soon as possible.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in a statement issued hours later, said that the same problem should never be repeated.
“We will do all we can to achieve a society where no one is discriminated against, whether they have illnesses or handicaps, and live together while respecting each other’s personality and individuality,” he said.
The government had until recently maintained that the sterilizations were legal at the time.
The apology and the redress law follow a series of lawsuits by victims who recently came forward after breaking decades of silence. That prompted lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition parties to draft a compensation package to make amends for the victims.
The plaintiffs are seeking about ￥30 million each in growing legal actions that are spreading nationwide, saying that the government’s implementation of the law violated the victims’ right to self-determination, reproductive health and equality.
They say that the government redress measures are too small for their suffering.
In addition to the forced sterilizations, more than 8,000 others were sterilized with consent, although likely under pressure, while nearly 60,000 women had abortions because of hereditary illnesses.
However, the redress law does not cover those who had to abort a pregnancy, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations said.
Among them were about 10,000 leprosy patients who had been confined in isolated institutions until 1996, when the leprosy prevention law was also abolished.
The government has already offered compensation and an apology to them for its forced isolation policy.
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