LONDON: Two nine-year-olds were among the 25,000 people forcibly sterilized in Japan under its post-World War Two eugenics law, a parliament report has revealed adding that families of the victims demanded compensation.
According to the report, the law, in place for 48 years, forced hundreds of thousands of people to undergo operations to prevent them from having children deemed “inferior”.
The law is widely recognized as a dark chapter in Japan’s post-war recovery and was repealed in 1996 as scores of the victims had physical or cognitive disabilities or mental illnesses.
The parliament released a long-awaited 1,400-page study on Monday, based on an investigation by the officials initiated in June 2020. The report revealed that about 25,000 people had been subjected to operations, where over 16,000 among them were performed without taking their consent.
The report further disclosed that some people were told that they were undergoing routine procedures like appendix operations as the then-local governments had the power to arbitrarily assign the surgery. The practice of sterilization also included two nine-year-olds-a boy and a girl.
An 80-year-old victim who was also forced to have the surgery at the age of 14, told local media the report provided proof that the then government had deceived children.
Findings of Report on Victim Outrage on Social Media
Critics of the report expressed dismay that how it took more than 50 years for the law to be scrapped, without explaining the reason behind the creation of the law. The findings of the report also drawn outrage on social media.
One Twitter user said it was sickening to know that children as young as nine were sterilized.
Another criticized the government for being too slow to repeal the eugenics law while expressing hope that Tokyo would also look at laws that limit the rights of women and LGBTQ persons.
Earlier in 2019, the government apologized and agreed to pay each survivor 3.2 million yen ($28,600; £22,100).
Then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in the official apology that the eugenics law caused “great suffering” to all the victims.
Other countries that have had forced sterilization policies include Sweden, Germany, and the US. They have also apologized and paid compensation to surviving victims.
