At least 16,500 people, including children, were forcibly sterilized in Japan over nearly 50 years, between 1948 and 1996, under a law intended to prevent the birth of “poor children.”
The estimate appears in a 1,400-page report delivered this week to the Japanese Parliament and picked up this Wednesday by the British newspaper The Guadian.
Among the thousands of people forced to undergo sterilization are now known to be children, including at least one boy and a girl as young as nine.
Another 8,000 people reportedly consented to the sterilization operation, likely under duress, the report notes, while many thought they were only going to undergo an appendectomy.
At stake is a eugenic project to “reconstruct” Japanese society after World War II, which involved preventing babies considered “inferior” by sterilizing people with hereditary diseases or motor, cognitive or mental deficiencies.
The government has already apologized for the pain caused to the victims and in 2019 the deputies approved compensation to finance the reversal of sterilization processes, which can be requested until April of next year.
So far, only 1,049 women have received the money: 3.2 million yen (about 21,000 euros) per person.
Source: TSF
