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Her Death Shook Japan. It May Not Shift Refugee Rules.

Wishma Rathnayake wasted away in a migrant detention center. An official report on her case placed little blame and offered only limited recommendations.

A photo of Wishma Rathnayake on a small altar in the house of one of her supporters, in Tsushima, Japan.Credit...Noriko Hayashi for The New York Times

TOKYO — The death of a 33-year-old Sri Lankan migrant, trapped in the bowels of Japan’s immigration system, triggered national calls to reform the bureaucracy that allowed her to waste away in a detention center without proper medical treatment.

A government report on Tuesday detailed the missteps that contributed to the tragedy, including insufficient medical resources, communication failures and a lack of proper oversight. But activists and politicians said the proposed changes didn’t go far enough to address the fundamental failures in an immigration system they describe as opaque and capricious.

The nearly 280-page document describes the series of events that led to the death in March of the 33-year-old Wishma Rathnayake, who had been detained for overstaying her visa. While the report said her death was the “result of illness,” it noted the possibility that her health was affected by several factors, “making it difficult to concretely determine the cause.”

The report outlined areas for reform, mainly centered on improving medical care by hiring more doctors and improving staff members’ training on assessing detainees’ physical and mental condition. The report did not assign blame to any individuals, nor did it address some of the more systemic issues with the immigration system.

Under current rules, detainees can be held indefinitely even when they have no criminal record and have applied for asylum status. Ms. Rathnayake had filed an application for permission to stay in Japan on humanitarian grounds over fears that she could be the target of violence by a former domestic partner if she returned to Sri Lanka. A request for provisional medical release while she waited was denied.

Japan rarely grants asylum requests. Despite being the world’s third-largest economy, the country approves less than 1 percent of applications, which last year amounted to 47 people.

In a statement, Shoko Sasaki, the official in charge of Japan’s immigration system, took responsibility for creating the environment that led to Ms. Rathnayake’s death and offered condolences and apologies to the family, saying that she was “extremely sorry that she was not able to return home to her family in good health.”

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The Nagoya Regional Immigration Services building where Ms. Rathnayake was detained and died.Credit...Noriko Hayashi for The New York Times

In separate remarks, Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa said that the report suggested to her that “if the detention facility had objectively and constantly re-evaluated its practices perhaps it might have been able to take a more compassionate approach to the person who passed away.”

“Maybe the detention facility had lapsed in its awareness that it was dealing with individual people,” she added.

Four officials who oversaw Ms. Rathnayake’s detention were given verbal warnings, the only disciplinary actions resulting from the case.

Politicians and activists who have pushed for years to overhaul the system criticized the report for addressing only the superficial, bureaucratic issues that contributed to Ms. Rathnayake’s death.

Taiga Ishikawa, a member of a parliamentary group on immigration and refugee policy that is seeking legal changes, said that the country needed to conduct an independent inquiry into the situation at the immigration center.

Allowing the department to investigate itself “is like letting a thief investigate his own robbery,” he said, adding that “a person has died. It’s neglect.”

Shoichi Ibusuki, a lawyer representing Ms. Rathnayake’s family, said her case was proof of systemic failure. “There were many opportunities to save her life, but she still died,” he said.

In a news conference on Tuesday, Ms. Rathnayake’s sisters, who are currently in Japan, excoriated Japanese authorities for their role in their sister’s death, saying they would stay in the country until they had received a satisfactory explanation.

They may not have much recourse. The family said that officials spent months stonewalling their efforts to get access to surveillance footage documenting Ms. Rathnayake’s final days in detention.

On Thursday, the sisters will be able to view around two hours of excerpts from the videos. Officials will not screen the footage for the family’s lawyers, but did not give a reason for the limits.

Ms. Rathnayake’s case came to national attention after her death in March. The authorities had taken Ms. Rathnayake — who had come to Japan as a student but had overstayed her visa — into custody in August last year; she had appeared at a police station begging for protection from a boyfriend who she said had abused her.

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Protesting in Nagoya, Japan, in May following the death of Ms. Rathnayake.Credit...Noriko Hayashi for The New York Times

Activists who had visited her during her stay in detention said that she had been unable to keep down most solid foods for months and that she had repeatedly begged officials at the center for medical treatment. In medical records from the time, a doctor recommended that she be transferred to a hospital for treatment. A medical test in mid-February indicated that she was starving, according to details in the new report.

Even after she had become so weak that she could barely move, many officials questioned whether she was feigning her illness in an attempt to be released from detention, the report said. In the face of evidence that she was in severe medical distress, they “suspected that she was exaggerating,” it concluded.

“There was a need to raise staff awareness so that they could appropriately react without overlooking a situation that sincerely required a medical response,” the report said. “In the Nagoya bureau, training to improve the staff’s education and awareness was not sufficiently implemented.”

To prevent similar problems from occurring in the future, the detention center should, among other measures, hire full-time medical staff, improve emergency training, reform information sharing practices, and “appropriately” handle cases touching on domestic violence, it said.

“It’s shocking that this has ended with just a light warning for Nagoya’s immigration bureau,” said Mr. Ibusuki, the lawyer for Ms. Rathnayake’s family.

“The problems are not going to be fixed just by providing more staff, by better educating the staff, or by improving the system of medical treatment,” he said.

Hisako Ueno has been reporting on Japanese politics, business, gender, labor and culture for The Times since 2012. She previously worked for the Tokyo bureau of The Los Angeles Times from 1999 to 2009. More about Hisako Ueno

Ben Dooley reports on Japan’s business and economy, with a special interest in social issues and the intersections between business and politics. More about Ben Dooley

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: A Migrant’s Death Shakes Japan, but Not Its Rules. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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