Children as young as nine were among the 25 000 people forcibly sterilised in Japan in terms of a eugenics law that was in place for 48 years after the Second World War.
Under this law, people were forced to undergo operations to prevent them having children deemed ‘inferior’. Many of them had physical or cognitive disabilities, or mental illness, the BBC reports.
This emerges from a long-awaited 1 400-page report released by Japan’s government.
The law, which was only repealed in 1996, is widely recognised as a dark chapter in Japan’s post-war recovery.
It acknowledged that about 25 000 people had been subjected to operations, more than 16 000 of which were performed without consent.
The report reveals that some people were told that they were undergoing routine procedures like appendix operations. It also reveals that two nine-year-olds, a boy and a girl, were sterilized under the law.
In 2019, Tokyo apologized, and agreed to pay each survivor 3.2 million yen, equivalent to about $28 600.
[Image: Sofia Terzoni from Pixabay]