DHAKA: A Japanese court has ordered public broadcaster NHK to pay US$10,000 (S$12,500) in damages to an indigenous Taiwanese woman for defaming her by using the term "human zoo" in a programme, officials said on Friday.

Overturning a lower court ruling, the Tokyo High Court ordered NHK on Thursday to pay US$1,000 to the woman, with Presiding Judge Noriaki Sudo reportedly saying the broadcaster used a term that had a "serious discriminatory meaning".

The programme looked at the "Japan-Britain Exhibition" held in London in 1910 to which Japan took several members of Taiwan`s aboriginal population, including the father of the woman, as exotic exhibits, Jiji Press and Kyodo News reported.

Taiwan was a Japanese colony at the time, and the practice of exhibiting the little-known peoples of far-flung territories was a common one among Western imperial powers. Historians say Japan, which had emerged from self-imposed isolation just half a century earlier, joined in partly as an attempt to establish itself as an imperial power and mitigate the perceived risk of being colonised itself.

Source: ST
BDST: 1459 HRS, NOV 29, 2013