Supreme Court Finds Forced Sterilization Unconstitutional

The Supreme Court found that the forced sterilizations undergone by the government of Japan were the largest violation of human rights in the post-war period. All the fifteen Justices unanimously ordered the government on July 3 to compensate for the plaintiffs who forcibly had sterilization surgery under the Eugene Protection Law of 1948. The court decided that the rule of time limit for filing lawsuit would not be applied to the victims.

To prevent births of “no-good descendants,” the Diet of Japan passed the Eugene Protection Law, which enabled sterilization surgery on a possible father or mother without a consent. If a medical doctor would recognize necessity of the surgery from the viewpoint of public interest, the sterilization can be made. According to a governmental survey, the surgeries were exercised on about twenty-five thousand people.

 

Although the law was replaced to the Maternal Protection Law in 1996, which deleted the clause of forcible sterilization, the victims have not fully salvaged from the violation of their human rights.

 

The Grand Bench of Supreme Court found the Eugene Protection Law as unconstitutional from the time when it passed the Diet. It made the first example for a law to be found as unconstitutional at the time of legislated. The court recognized violation against Article 13 which guaranteed the people freedom of not harmed on their body against their will. The court also found violation against Article 14 for equality under the law, because the forcible sterilization was exercised on handicapped people.

 

The Supreme Court decided that the right for compensation against illegal activities would be eliminated twenty years later in 1989. Quoting that decision, the government of Japan argued that the request of compensation was invalid, because the lawsuits made by victims of sterilization was filed after twenty years had passed.

 

However, the Grand Bench concluded that the government would still be responsible for the wrong execution of the law even after twenty years have passed from the surgery, considering the government’s inactiveness in compensating for the victims’ damage even after the forcible sterilization clause was removed in 1996. “It cannot be tolerated that the government escapes, with the limitation of time, from responsibility for compensation,” said the court.

 

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is going to pay compensation for the victims. The Supreme Court ordered the government to pay 16.5 thousand yen in maximum as compensation for a plaintiff of four lawsuits, and one lawsuit was returned to the lower court. Kishida administration is considering new legislation to compensate for the victims as a whole.

 

While the government decided to pay compensation of 3.2 million yen for each victim in 2019, it was too little to compensate for the violation of human rights that had taken every opportunity of reproduction from a person. Next point to see is how Kishida will respond to the historical violation against human rights.