Vietnam woman acquitted of abandoning stillborn twins she kept in cardboard box for 33 hours: Japan’s top court
- Fearful Le Thi Thuy Linh, who was working on a mandarin farm, placed the bodies in a cardboard box on a shelf in her room with a letter of apology
- The decision is likely to impact the government-sponsored internship system, criticised as being used as a cover for companies to import cheap labour
Japan’s top court on Friday acquitted a former Vietnamese trainee of abandoning her stillborn twins, overturning lower court rulings that sentenced her to a suspended prison term.
In the first finalised ruling concerning the abandonment of a stillborn child, four judges on the Supreme Court’s Second Petty Bench unanimously ruled that the acts committed by Le Thi Thuy Linh, 24, did not amount to the crime of corpse abandonment.
Following the birth of her stillborn twin boys in November 2020, Linh placed their bodies in a cardboard box and left them on a shelf in her room for around 33 hours, along with a letter of apology.
The court ruled that such actions are “not considered incompatible with customary burial practices”, and thus did not constitute corpse abandonment.
Linh said at an online press conference following the ruling, “I am happy from the bottom of my heart. I hope Japan will change into a society that understands the concerns of pregnant trainees and women so they can give birth with ease.”
The government-sponsored technical internship, introduced in 1993 under the premise that it helps to transfer skills to developing countries, has faced criticism over reports that foreign trainees who got pregnant while in Japan were deported.
