By Hyo-Jin Paik
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – With the monsoon season approaching in about a month, the UN and other humanitarian agencies are expressing concerns over the overcrowded, unsanitary camps where Tamil civilians are being housed.

Human rights groups have argued that holding these civilians in the military-run camps is an “illegal form of collective punishment,” but the Sri Lankan government is claiming that the camps are conducting screenings for potential rebel fighters. 

Tamils in camps.  Courtesy of AFP.

However, the UN has said that the screening process is progressing too slowly, and those who have gone through the screening have not yet been released unless the person is under 10 or over 60 years old.

Mark Cutts of the UN was told by Sri Lanka’s senior military officials that probably less than 20% of the Tamils currently in the camps will be able to resettle despite Sri Lankan government’s initial decision to resettle most Tamils by end of this year. 

“We need to look into this issue of how long are they going to be kept in these places, will they be given proper freedom of movement…,” said Cutts.

The camps are housing twice as many people as originally intended, and activists are worried that monsoon rains, which is likely to cause flooding, will worsen the sanitary conditions by bringing fecal matter to the surface and subjecting people to diseases.  Moreover, the camps were averaging about 40 people per latrine while the UN standard is 20.

In addition, Sri Lanka has expelled James Elder of UNICEF, accusing him of siding with the Tamil Tigers.  Elder has spoken out against the sufferings of children in Sri Lanka, and UNICEF “unequivocally rejects any allegations of bias” since Elder’s statements were based on “concrete information that the [UN] attained and verified.”

UN Secretary-General Bank Ki-moon strongly denounced Elder’s expulsion saying he has “full confidence in the work of the [UN] in Sri Lanka, which includes making public statements when necessary in an effort to save lives and prevent grave humanitarian problems.” 

Furthermore, human rights organizations claim that the Sri Lankan government has failed to investigate the rights abuses and war crimes which occurred during the fighting. 
For more information, please see:

BBC – UN concern over Sri Lanka camps – 11 September 2009

CNN – Concern over conditions in Sri Lankan camps – 11 September 2009

Inter Press Services – SRI LANKA: Gov’t to Resettle Displaced Tamils Ahead of Monsoon – 12 September 2009

Radio Canada – Sri Lankan refugee camps try UN patience – 11 September 2009

By Megan E. Dodge
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

TOKYO, Japan – Prisoners on death row in Japan endure cruel conditions as they await capital punishment. Human rights group, Amnesty International, warns that the terms of the convictions are unjust.  

Last year, 15 prisoners in Japan were executed, and approximately 102 inmates are on death row presently. A number of them are elderly prisoners who have spent years or even decades in isolation. One inmate, Hakamada Iwao has been on death row for more than 40 years. From January 2006 to January 2009, 32 men were executed, and among them, 17 were over the age of 60, with five being in their seventies placing them as the oldest prisoners in the world who were executed. 

In a report compiled by Amnesty International, inmates on death row are held in isolation and not permitted to speak to other inmates. Aside from exercise sessions sanctioned two or three times a week, death row prisoners are prohibited from moving within their own cells and must remain seated. Amnesty International’s United Kingdom director, Kate Allen, referred to the death-row system as a “regime of silence, isolation and sheer non-existence.”

The human rights group fears that conditions of isolation faced by Japanese death row prisoners are making them mentally ill. In response, Allen called on the government to immediately halt executions: “rather than persist with a shameful capital punishment system, the new Japanese government should immediately impose a moratorium on all further executions.” The human rights group director also called the Japanese practice of informing prisoners that they would be killed with only a few hours notice was “utterly cruel.”

Researchers who attempted to report on the situation and policies of the Japanese justice system were discouraged in trying to compile facts due to the secrecy surrounding the country’s justice system. However, examiners were able to determine that Japan’s crime rate is low in comparison to other countries of a similar socio-economic level of development and the number of murders is also low. Despite the statistic that criminal trials have a 99% conviction rate, the actual level of imprisonment is relatively low, and the number of prisoners convicted and sentenced to death is a small fraction of all those convicted of capital offences – a little over 1% according to Amnesty International. Yet, those who are among those convicted of capital offences, the conditions preceding their final punishment is daunting and cruel leading to mental illness.

Japan’s code of criminal procedure states that if a person condemned to death is in a state of insanity, the execution shall be stayed by the justice minister. The fear by human rights groups like Amnesty International is that there is a rise of insanity among inmates caused by extreme conditions and the sheer length of their detention and police interrogation reform is needed to investigate these claims.

For more information, please see:

BBC – Japan death row ‘breeds insanity’ – 10 September 2009

Huffington Post – Amnesty International: Japan Must Stop Executing Mentally Ill Prisoners –11 September 2009

Guardian – Prisoners driven insane on Japan’s death row, says Amnesty – 10 September 2009