SNA News (Toronto) — Although there have been calls for immigration reform following the death of Sri Lankan national Wishma Sandamali in a detention center, the actual prospects for improvement in Japan’s controversial refugee and immigration system are not particularly bright.

Sandamali was 33 when she died at the Nagoya Regional Immigration Bureau. Her persistent complaints of illness went unheeded for weeks while the Japanese staff stood by and did nothing. When Sandamali’s family was finally provided with a two-hour cut from two weeks of security footage, they could hardly bear to watch it.

The Immigration Services Agency has since shown more of the footage to Wishma’s sister Poornima, but it continues to refuse to fully release the footage or provide copies, citing nonspecific “security concerns.”

Documents from the facility related to Sandamali were also released, but they were so heavily redacted that the family “can’t trust the contents of the report (on her death),” as Poornima put it at a news conference.

The report did suggest some areas for reform, mainly focusing on improving medical care by hiring more doctors and improving training on the assessment of the physical and mental condition of detainees. The report did not assign blame to any individual, nor did it address any systemic issues.

Sandamali’s death sparked outrage from activist groups in Japan. This summer the Diet deliberated a bill to revise rules on how to handle foreigners facing deportation, including the clearance to forcibly deport refugees if their applications for their right to stay get rejected twice. The government withdrew the bill following protests over Sandamali’s death.

Japan Network towards Human Rights Legislation for Non-Japanese Nationals and Ethnic Minorities and Human Rights Now issued a joint statement criticizing the final report on Sandamali’s death released by the Immigration Services Agency, saying that the report reveals many disturbing acts by immigration officials that trampled on her human dignity. The groups concluded that Sandamali died as a result of an “arbitrary detention” that violated Japan’s Constitution and international human rights law.

On October 1, a group made up of students and foreigner-support groups seeking transparency in the death of Sandamali submitted a 93,148-signature petition to the Immigration Services Agency calling for the release of all security camera footage and a comprehensive plan to prevent similar deaths.

Despite these actions, the prospects for significant positive change in Japan’s immigration policies are grim.

Following the presentation of the petition, the group announced the results of a survey it carried out on Japan’s political parties. When asked if they would support the creation of a third-party investigative body for Sandamali’s case and for the full release of the security footage, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party answered “no” to both questions.

Opposition politicians and activists who have pushed for years to overhaul the immigration system criticized the report for addressing only the superficial issues that contributed to Sandamali’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 a third-party investigation into the situation at the immigration center. Allowing the department to investigate itself “is like letting a thief investigate his own robbery,” he said.

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

The agency’s report said that many officials questioned whether she was feigning her illness in an attempt to be released from detention, even in the face of evidence that she was in severe medical distress.

Sandamali’s family is still awaiting a satisfactory explanation for her death. The family said that immigration officials have spent months stonewalling their efforts to get full access to the security footage.

Sandamali’s case is only the most recent of a long history of deaths at Japan’s immigration detention centers.

Anwar Hussin, 57, a Rohingya from Myanmar, died in October 2013, after allegedly suffering a stroke while being held at an immigration detention center.

Saeid Ghadimi, a 33-year-old Iranian, allegedly choked on food and died on March 29, 2014, at the East Japan Immigration Control Center in Ibaraki Prefecture.

Flaubert Lea Wandji, a 43-year-old Cameroonian, died at the same center the very next day, reportedly due to acute heart failure.

Niculas Fernando died in November 2014 after his complaints about a sharp chest pain went ignored, similar to what later happened to his fellow Sri Lankan Sandamali in Nagoya.

History repeats itself as Japan’s immigration detention facilities cycle through fatalities.

In February 2014, more than forty detainees went on hunger strike at a facility in Osaka to protest conditions, mainly complaining about poor medical care.

The findings of the watchdog body for the detention facilities are routinely edited by the Ministry of Justice before being made public, and the ministry has failed to act on repeated recommendations for improving medical care.

“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,” said Ibuski.

Inhumane treatment of foreign nationals–especially those from poorer countries–at Japan’s immigration detention centers require a thorough investigation of systemic problems, but there is yet few grounds for hope due in the face of the lack of will to change by the conservative ruling party.

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