Nearly 3,900 residents of Indonesia's Sumatra Island on Thursday filed a lawsuit in Tokyo, each seeking 5 million yen for damages caused by a dam Japan funded with official development assistance.
In the suit, the first of its kind over ODA, the 3,861 plaintiffs claim they were forcibly resettled after the Kotopanjang Dam was completed in 1997.
Among those named as defendants in the suit, brought before the Tokyo District Court, are the Japanese government and its foreign assistance body, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the state-run Japan Bank for International Cooperation and Tokyo Electric Power Services Co., an affiliate of Tokyo Electric Power Co., Japan's largest utility.