Arab News Japan

TOKYO: More than a hundred people turned out at the Tokyo High Court on Tuesday for the first trial aimed at gaining compensation for those who voluntarily left their homes following the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima.

Forty-seven plaintiffs brought a civil action against the state and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which runs the now inactive nuclear plant.

A young plaintiff said that when he was a child, his parents did not receive an evacuation order and decided on their own to evacuate to Tokyo. In school in Tokyo, he was subject to physical bullying and intimidation because he was from Fukushima. Students asked him to return the money the government had promised to the families of refugees from the nuclear disaster.

The young plaintiff said he was traumatized by this experience because his parents did not receive such allowances as they took refuge voluntarily. He even wrote to Pope Francis who, he said, replied to him and supported him in taking steps to seek reparation and justice.

Another plaintiff’s family told Arab News that their child always hid the fact that they were from Fukushima to avoid discrimination at school.

In October 2022, Cécilia Damary, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, declared that discrimination between forced evacuees and voluntary evacuees had no reason to exist under international law.