March 26, 2023

Akahata editorial (excerpts)

The Supreme Court on March 24 acquitted a Vietnam woman who was accused of abandoning the bodies of her stillborn twins in her room in Kumamoto Prefecture where she worked under the Technical Intern Training Program. The woman, Le Thi Thuy Linh, gave birth in isolation for fear of being sent back to Vietnam. Support for her claim of innocence has increased as evidenced by the submission of 95,000 signatures calling for a not-guilty verdict.

This case highlighted a structural problem in the foreign trainee program. Linh came to Japan in 2018 to work as a foreign trainee on a Kumamoto farm. She used most of her earnings to make remittances to her family and to repay 1.5 million yen in debts incurred when she borrowed money to come to Japan. When she got pregnant, she was unable to inform her employer of this fact because she heard that pregnant trainees are forced to go back to their home countries. She was increasingly isolated due to the language barrier and she could find no one to ask for help.

People working in Japan, including foreign trainees, are eligible for protection under the labor legislation which prohibits dismissal of women for reasons of pregnancy and childbirth. However, the results of a survey by the Immigration Service Agency in 2022 showed that 26.5% of female trainees surveyed said that they were told that if they get pregnant, they will lose their jobs.

The foreign trainee program was launched under the pretext of promoting international cooperation through the transfer of Japan’s advanced technologies and skills. However, in reality, the program has become a tool to use foreign workers as cheap, unskilled labor. With many human rights violations, such as wage theft, forced return to home countries, violence, and sexual abuses reported, the program has been facing fierce criticism from the international community.

After the top court ruling, Linh said, “I hope Japanese society will turn into one where pregnant foreign trainees can find someone ask for help and give birth without anxieties.” The government should take her statement seriously.