Kirk here thanking Monaco Speed for his quick (true to his name) translation of the Japanese text of the Change.org appeal for Ms. Linh. First, if you missed the original post, here’s a link:
https://www.facebook.com/Kumamotoi/posts/6070962006310514
And here’s the Change.org link:
https://www.change.org/p/福岡高等裁判所-第2刑事部-裁判長裁判官-辻川-靖夫-御中-ベトナム人技能実習生リンさんの無罪を求めます?redirect=false
And, finally, here’s the translation from Mr. Speed:
Please note that when you sign the petition, you will be asked to make a donation to Change.org, not to our support group. If you would like to inquire about donations, please use the Change.org contact form. “If you don’t want to donate, your signature is still valid. What Happened to Ms. Linh? On November 15, 2020, Vietnamese technical intern Le Thi Thuy Linh gave birth to stillborn twins alone on a tatami mat. The next morning, Ms. Linh was taken to the hospital by her employer. The doctor called the police, who arrested her as soon as she left the hospital and charged her with abandoning a corpse. She was later released on bail, but in July 2021, the Kumamoto District Court sentenced her to eight months in prison, suspended for three years. In July 2021, she was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment and three years’ probation by the Kumamoto District Court, but in July 2021, she appealed to the Fukuoka High Court, saying that she had neither abandoned nor hidden the baby. Ms. Linh came to Japan in August 2018 at the age of 19 to help her mother support the family alone because her father was too ill to work, and has been working hard at a citrus farm in Kumamoto Prefecture. Before coming to Japan, she owed 1.5 million yen to a Vietnamese sending agency, so she sent 100,000 yen from her 120,000 yen take-home pay to Vietnam and worked almost without a break for a year and a half to repay the debt. In May 2020, she found out she was pregnant, but as many women are forced to return to their home countries due to pregnancy, Ms. Linh was afraid of being forced to return to her home country and could not talk to anyone about it. On the night of the 14th, she had severe abdominal pain and gave birth to twins while suffering from pain, bleeding, loneliness and fear all night long. She was so sad when she saw the motionless babies that she laid out towels on a cardboard box she had nearby as a coffin and laid the bodies of the twins there. I named them and said, “I’m sorry, my twin babies! May they soon be in a peaceful place. I didn’t abandon my babies, nor did I hide them! So why am I being charged with a crime? Judge Takao Sugihara found Ms. Lin guilty because she did not prepare the body for cremation and burial in the cemetery, but we believe that Ms. Lin, who did not understand the Japanese language or the Japanese customs and laws regarding death and funerals, could only do so much in the immediate postpartum period and that she did the best she could in her position. Slavery in the Modern World? At present, Japan accepts nearly 400,000 technical interns, whose labor supports the livelihood of many people in Japan. However, technical intern trainees are not allowed the freedom to choose their occupation, relocate their residence, or get pregnant or give birth in Japan, which should be guaranteed to them as human beings. Nearly 80% of technical trainees are in their teens and twenties. Young technical intern trainees work at the production sites of most of the lunch boxes, fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish that are lined up in large quantities in department stores and supermarkets. When you put your hands together to say “Itadakimasu” (thank you for the food), have you ever thought about the people who are working so hard in Japan, far away from their home countries? Have you ever given even the slightest thought to those people who live so close to us? Pregnancy, childbirth, and marriage are all important things in life. It is always necessary to talk to someone about your physical and mental anxiety. I think we have created a society that does not allow people to do so. What can we do? Ms. Lin was reported as a criminal, and many media came to the farm where she was working, and the quiet village by the sea was in turmoil. These two things have great significance. Losing one’s workplace = no longer a technical intern, and if one disappears, one is considered to be in the country illegally and deported. Loss of housing = difficulty in getting bail, and being held in detention while facing trial. Ms. Lin still had a strong will to work. Therefore, we are looking for an emergency host that meets these two conditions. That was our first encounter with Ms. Lin. We were stunned by the technical internship system, which did not show the slightest hint of the philosophy of international contribution. They work hard, have little time or opportunity to learn the language, and return to their home countries after three to five years as if they were invisible. When I think about this case, shouldn’t the first thing we should have done was to care for Lin’s body and mourn the death of her babies? We can’t let Linh go back to Vietnam with the unkind treatment of arrest, detention, prosecution, and conviction on her shoulders. Please raise your voice with us! So we do not want to end this issue by punishing Ms. Linh alone as a criminal. We believe that Ms. Lin is innocent, and we urge that the judgment of acquittal be handed down after the first trial is reversed. At the same time, we are also launching a paper-based signature campaign by the following five organizations We will submit them to the court together with the signatures of Change and the paper-based signatures. Therefore, to avoid duplication, please sign either this change or the paper-based petition. Signature collection point: Association to support the trial of Linh, a Vietnamese technical intern Calling organization Association to Support the Trial of Vietnamese Technical Intern Linh Comstacar Association for Living with Foreigners Seigakusei Jikei Hospital NPO Kumamoto YWCA Defense team for Linh’s criminal trial
Finally, in order to get a different picture on this post (so that people don’t confuse it with the previous one, I’m linking to this article in Vietnamese. I read it with Google translate and the English translation is quite readable and the content fits quite well with other news reports I have seen.
