On November 19th, the second instance court finally announced its verdict regarding the death of a Nepali man who died after being subjected to physical restraint while in custody of the Tokyo police. The Tokyo High Court ruled that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government should pay approximately 39 million yen (about 1.76 million RMB) in compensation to the man’s family.
In 2017, 39-year-old Nepali man Arjun was arrested by Tokyo police on suspicion of possessing someone else’s credit card. He was initially detained at the Shinjuku Police Station of the Metropolitan Police Department, during which he was forced to wear restraints, with his wrists and knees bound with belts and ropes for an extended period. Subsequently, he was transferred to the Tokyo District Prosecutors Office, where he lost consciousness during questioning and ultimately died. His family filed a lawsuit against the Tokyo police. However, the first-instance ruling in March 2023 awarded only 1 million yen (about 45,000 RMB) in compensation. The Nepali “Torture Compensation Law” sets the maximum fixed compensation at 1 million rupees (equivalent to 1 million yen), and the Tokyo District Court believed this clause also applies to Nepali residents in Japan.
The Nepali government, which claims to be led by a “leftist communist” regime, was only willing to pay about 50,000 RMB in compensation for those who died from interrogation torture, which is already shocking; meanwhile, the Tokyo police used the so-called “mutual guarantee” principle to introduce this standard into Japan, detaining innocent people until death and pushing the compensation to the minimum—an act of extreme shamelessness! While the Japanese government shows no mercy to Nepali workers when collecting taxes, it shifts responsibility by claiming “you are foreigners” when oppressing and causing their deaths. Some even argue that the man was a thief who stole credit card information, thus “deserving” his fate. However, it is clear that the Japanese monopoly bourgeoisie and their controlled media are adept at inciting national hatred, slandering foreigners to cover up domestic class conflicts. According to their usual tactics, if Arjun had truly been a credit card thief, the media would have already sensationalized the story. Yet, the report clearly states that he was only “suspected of embezzlement and deprivation of possession,” and the so-called credit card was “found on the street”—which indicates there is no evidence that Arjun was a credit card thief, nor any reason to attribute his death to “deserving punishment.”
Fortunately, with the persistent struggle of his family and the selfless support of the Japanese people, the Tokyo High Court, under pressure, ultimately increased the second-instance compensation to 39.43 million yen (due to the passage of time and difficulty in finding relevant information, the family expressed gratitude to many Japanese supporters after the second-instance ruling). The bourgeois legal system always serves to uphold the oppressors’ continued oppression, while the oppressed can only endure the ruling order. Although the compensation was increased in the second instance, this case, which began in 2017 and was delayed until the verdict in November this year, has taken eight years in total.