The Tokyo District Court on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit from a foreign woman who claimed she was the victim of discriminatory treatment by police.
The South Asian woman in her 40s and her six-year-old Japanese national daughter had sued the Tokyo Metropolitan Government for ¥4.4 million in damages over alleged discriminatory treatment by Metropolitan Police Department officers.
In the complaint, the woman said she and her daughter were playing in a park in the Japanese capital in June 2021 when the daughter was pushed by a male stranger who shouted at them.
Police arrived on the scene after a report of a man claiming his son had been kicked and took the complainants to a police station where they were held for four and a half hours without a search warrant.
Presiding Judge Masaki Katano said: “It is difficult to judge the police’s actions as illegal.”
“Even after examining the testimony of the woman and the police officers, it is difficult to conclude that what prosecutors allege occurred,” Katano also said.
The plaintiffs argued that the police officers, out of a discriminatory attitude towards foreigners, unilaterally determined that the woman was the cause of the incident at the park. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government argued that the police action was not based on racial discrimination and was not problematic.
