Tokyo (CNN)As a child, Wishma Rathnayake was fascinated with "Oshin," a popular 1980s' television drama about a young girl who rises from poverty to head a Japanese supermarket chain. Urged by her father to emulate her hero, Rathnayake started learning Japanese with a dream of one day moving to Japan from the small Sri Lankan town of Gampaha, northeast of Colombo. When her father died, the university graduate convinced her mother she could earn enough money working abroad as an English teacher to fund her retirement. The family remortgaged their home, and in 2017, Rathnayake moved to Narita, on the outskirts of Tokyo, on a student visa. Within three years, she was dead. After overstaying her visa, Rathnayake was detained in Japan's immigration system, where she died on March 6, 2021, at the age of 33. Rathnayake's case made headlines in Japan and fueled debate over the treatment of foreigners in the country, where 27 immigration detainees have died since 1997, according to the Japan Lawyers Network for Refugees. Her death has also exposed the lack of transparency in a system where people can languish for years with no prospect of release -- a system that her sisters are now campaigning to change.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/04/asia/japan-immigration-detention-wishma-death-hnk-intl-dst/index.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twCNNi&utm_content=2021-12-05T08:42:00
