TOKYO (AFP) – Japan’s Supreme Court issued a rare not guilty verdict yesterday, overturning the conviction of a Vietnamese woman for abandoning stillborn twins that she delivered alone.
Le Thi Thuy Linh received a three-month suspended sentence in January 2022, in a case cited as an example of the pressures faced by women enrolled in Japan’s “technical intern” programme.
She appealed and was acquitted yesterday, a court spokesman told AFP. Her legal team and supporters hailed the verdict, holding banners in front of the court declaring, “Linh is innocent”.
Linh was working on a farm in southern Japan’s Kumamoto when she discovered she was pregnant in July 2020. She feared her family back home would be “destroyed financially” if she was deported over the pregnancy, her lawyer Hiroki Ishiguro told AFP last year.
She delivered stillborn twin boys at home, and when she sought help the next day from doctor, she was reported to authorities.
