Japanese Government Ordered to Compensate 3 Victims of Forced Sterilization

This photo taken on March 29, 2018, shows Junko Iizuka (C), who was sterilized at the age for 16, delivering her message during a meeting with lawmakers in Tokyo. Around 16,500 Japanese were forcibly sterilized under a law in force from 1949 to 1996. Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP via Getty Images

A court in Japan has ordered the government to pay 27.5 million yen ($239,000) in damages to three people with disabilities over forced sterilization, after ruling the now-defunct eugenics protection law unconstitutional, local media reported.

The three include a woman in her 70s with an intellectual disability, who underwent forced sterilization in 1965, and a couple in their 80s and 70s with hearing impairments, of whom the wife was forced to undergo sterilization in 1974.