A Vietnamese technical trainee who was arrested Thursday for abandoning her baby's body in western Japan feared her employer would force her to return to her country if her pregnancy was discovered, investigative sources said Friday.
The 19-year-old who admitted to the allegation lived near the location of the baby boy's discovery in an empty lot in Higashihiroshima, Hiroshima Prefecture.
"I thought that if my pregnancy was discovered, I would be sent back to my country," she is quoted by one of the sources as saying.
She also admitted to having buried the infant, who an autopsy showed had been dead between one and four months, according to local police.
The police are investigating the cause of his death.
The 52-year-old president of the seafood processing plant where she worked has said he did not notice any signs of pregnancy because she was wearing a winter outfit or work attire when he saw her.
The young woman came to Japan in October and has been staying in the company's dormitory.
She is suspected of abandoning the child's body sometime after December. It was discovered Tuesday morning by a local resident, naked and face down on an empty lot near a road. The area is dotted with houses and farmland.
The arrest comes as another Vietnamese trainee in southwestern Japan was acquitted by the Supreme Court last month for abandoning her stillborn twins.
Japan established the technical internship program in 1993 with the intent to transfer knowledge and skills to developing countries.
But the program has been criticized as providing cover for companies to import cheap labor from Asia and creating situations allowing human rights abuses.
There have been cases where trainees have been forced by companies to return to their home countries after giving birth, despite Japanese law prohibiting worker abuse such as firing women over pregnancies.
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