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 daughter had sued the Tokyo Metropolitan Government for ¥4.4 million in damages over alleged discriminatory treatment by Metropolitan Police Department officers.
Judge Masaki Katano said “no illegality can be established” in the police actions.
According to the ruling, the woman and her daughter were playing in a park in the Japanese capital in June 2021 when a male stranger approached them, claiming that the woman’s daughter had kicked his son.
The man said to them, “Foreigners are not worth living.”
Prosecutors alleged that one of the police officers who arrived on the scene after receiving a report from the man told the daughter, “You must have kicked (the man’s son).”
Based on a sense of discrimination against foreigners, the officer unilaterally concluded who was at fault in the incident, prosecutors argued.
The judge said this alleged behavior by the officer was considered “somewhat abrupt and unnatural” for police personnel, and expressed doubt that the comment had been made.
The judge also defended the police interrogation of the daughter, rejecting allegations that the daughter was interrogated without consent without supervision and pressured to admit to kicking the man’s son.
At a press conference, the woman said it is very unfortunate to see a statement that encourages racial discrimination.
Her lawyer, Atsuko Nishiyama, said: “The ruling was based solely on the assumption that a police officer would not engage in such behavior, which is nonsense.” Nishiyama hinted at the possibility of an appeal.
