By Brian Lanciault
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

NEW DELHI, India–Three men were sentenced to death on Friday for two gang rapes committed last year in Mumbai.  These included an attack on a photojournalist that sparked protests in the city and raised fresh questions about attitudes to women in the world’s largest democracy.

A Mumbai court on Friday sentenced Vijay Jadhav, Kasim Bengali and Mohammed Salim Ansari to death, the first time capital punishment has been ordered in a case of rape not involving the death of the victim.

“There was no chance of reformation in these men and this sends a strong signal to society,” special prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam told reporters outside the court.

Women’s safety in India has been under the heavy scrutiny since the gang rape and murder of a student on a bus in Delhi two years ago.  The 2012 rape-murder provoked nationwide protests and the introduction of tougher sexual assault laws. Recently a stream of high-profile and highly publicized attacks has raised concerns that little has changed.

In this most recent case out of Mumbai, four men were convicted last week of gang-raping a photojournalist. The woman was attacked in the early evening of August 22 while on an assignment with a male colleague at an abandoned textile mill.

Three of the men were given the death penalty because they had also been found guilty of raping another woman at the same location in July. The fourth man received a life sentence and a juvenile charged for his involvement in the case is being tried separately.

“I think the court has given a distinct, definite and welcome verdict,” said Himanshu Roy, joint commissioner of police in Mumbai.

The attack on the photojournalist provoked a public outcry partly because Mumbai, India’s financial capital and the home of Bollywood, is considered one of the country’s safest cities for women. Mahalaxmi, the neighborhood where the two rapes took place, is a central district close to many new offices and bars. Since the attack, public scrutiny has been at a zenith.

For more information, please see:

BBC News–Mumbai gang rape: Death sentence for India rapists–4 April 2014

Voice of America–Indian Court Orders Death Sentence for Rapists–4 April 2014

Reuters–Three sentenced to death for gang rapes in Mumbai–4 April 2014

Channel News Asia–Indian court orders first death sentences for multiple rapes–4 April 2014

By Brian Lanciault

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

TOKYO, Japan–After forty-eight years of professed innocence and incarceration, thirty of which were in solitary confinement, Iwao Hakamada was freed Thursday. On June 10, 1966 when two children and their parents were stabbed to death and their home set ablaze, Hakamada, the longest-serving death row inmate in the world, was arrested, thrown in jail and ultimately sentenced to death for it.

Hakamada, a former professional boxer who is now 78, was released Thursday morning after a Japanese court concluded investigators had likely fabricated evidence during his 1968 trial, according to Associated Press reports. Hunch-backed and wearing a yellow button-down, he struggled into an awaiting car, surrounded by a crowd flashing cameras. The decision to free him comes a month after the exoneration and release of America’s longest-serving death row inmate, Glenn Ford.

Blood on a shirt prosecutors alleged Hakamada wore during the family’s murder turned out not to contain his DNA. The court ordered a retrial, calling Hakamada’s original verdict an injustice. Prosecutors reported that they will seek appeal.

The order marks only the sixth time in Japan’s postwar history that a death row inmate has been granted retrial. The decision is expected to ignite more criticism of a capital justice system that has come under attack before. Japan and the United States are the only two Group of Seven nations to maintain the death penalty, and it holds high popularity in Japan.

Critics report significant problems with the system. Death row inmates, who are hanged, don’t know the date of their execution until the morning of the event. “For decades,” Reuters reports, “Japan did not even officially announce that capital sentences had been carried out.” Perhaps most troubling of all, police obtain confessions in closed-door interrogations, opening the door for false or fabricated confessions.

This is exactly what Hakamada claims happened to him.

In 1966 Hakamada had taken a job in the town of Shimizu situated along Japan’s southern coast at a food-processing factory. On June 30 of that year, the factory’s manager and his wife and two children were found stabbed to death. Someone had also stolen 200,000 yen — $2,000 –from their house, which had been razed.

Two months later in August, Hakamada was arrested, charged with murder, robbery and arson. While in custody, he said he did it. He later recanted the confession, but it was too late. On September 11, 1968, a three-judge panel sentenced him to death.

The case wasn’t nearly as solid as it appeared. The sentencing haunted one of the judges. “I have thought about his trial for many years,” Judge Norimichi Kumamoto told reporters in 2007. ”The guilty verdict was based solely on Hakamada confessing to the killings. But he confessed after being confined and tortured in a small room for 20 days. … The police use shocking, barbaric means to extract confessions and those who make them do so only out of despair.”

“I have felt sadness and disappointment over this,” Kumamoto continued.

Despite that admission, Hakamada languished on death row for seven more years, always unsure if every day was to be his last. He was eventually admitted into the Guinness Book of World Records as the globe’s longest-serving death row inmate.

If previous cases offer guidance, Hakamada’s chances at retrial are good. Four of the other five death row inmates who were tried a second time were acquitted. The other case is pending.

For more information, please see:

The Telegraph– World “longest serving” death row prisoner released–27 March 2014

Washington Post– Japan frees world’s longest-serving death row inmate after more than 45 years— 27 March 2014

Japan Times– Hakamada released after 48 years— 27 March 2014

ABC News– Japan Frees World’s Longest-Held Death Row Inmates— 27 March 2014

By Brian Lanciault
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

SEOUL, S. Korea– South Korea has requested China’s support for a United Nations resolution seeking to hold North Korea’s leadership responsible for human rights violations.  To date, Beijing has opposed referring the case to an international court.

The U.N. Human Rights Council is seeking to pass a resolution on North Korea’s bleak human rights record this week in Geneva after a U.N. Commission of Inquiry concluded last month that “crimes against humanity” have been, and continue to be, committed by ranking officials in the socialist country.

The United States, the European Union and Japan are working to bring North Korea’s human rights situation before the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to refer the issue to the International Criminal Court (ICC).  Prospects remain dismal because China, key ally of the North, holds a veto.

“We have continued to discuss the issue with the Chinese side, but Chinese officials told us that it would not be an appropriate approach to try to openly address North Korea’s human rights situation,” a South Korean diplomat said on the condition of anonymity.

“The Chinese side maintains that North Korea’s human rights situation should be handled through constructive dialogue and that it opposes such an explicit way” of referring North Korea’s leaders to the ICC, the diplomat said.

China has publicly announced that it would vigorously oppose any move at the U.N. to bring North Korea’s leaders before the global criminal court.

“To bring the human right issues to the International Criminal Court does not help improve a country’s human rights conditions,” China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Feb. 17, when the U.N. commission published the report.

Concluding a year-long investigation, the U.N. commission reported widespread executions of people, enslavement and sexual violence by North Korea. It marked the clearest indictment against North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, in his speech at the U.N. human rights session in early March, proposed strengthening the role of the U.N. commission on North Korea’s human rights.

“For the international community, it is now time to begin the discussions on next steps to effectively follow up on the commission’s recommendations to improve the human rights situation in North Korea,” Yun said.

“In this vein, we strongly support the strengthening of the U.N. mechanisms to implement the commission’s recommendations. We also look forward to the leading role of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea,” Yun said.

For further information, please see:

Global Post– North Korea Newsletter No. 305— 20 March 2014

Mail Online– A smoking Un! Kim Jong smiles from ear to ear as he oversees army shooting exercise— 18 March 2014

Korea Joongang Daily– EU rep says North Korea felt stable— 20 March 2014

Washington Post– While slaughtering thousands, North Korea’s dictators published children’s books— 18 March 2014

By Brian Lanciault

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka–Britain has joined the US and three other countries in pushing for a full international inquiry into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka.  The announcement came Sunday, after the Sri Lankan government failed to satisfy international calls for an inquiry.

In an announcement last November at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Colombo, David Cameron gave Sri Lanka four months to conduct “a credible, thorough inquiry” into crimes alleged to have been committed during Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war.

The Prime Minister’s office said on Sunday that Sri Lanka had failed to fulfill the request. The UK had joined four other countries in tabling a motion at the UN Human Rights Council. The UK now fully supports the call by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for an international, independent investigation into violations of human rights and related crimes by both sides during the war.

A vote on the resolution is expected to take place at the end of this month.

A spokesperson for the PM added: “Ahead of the vote, we are working hard to secure support from other countries. The PM has personally written to a number of leaders whose countries are on the human rights council this session calling on them to support this resolution which would help to deliver progress on reconciliation and human rights in Sri Lanka.”

Sri Lanka has historically refused to allow the UN unrestricted access to former war zones.

The Sri Lankan army extinguished Tamil Tiger separatist forces in the final battle of a long civil war in 2009, in a strategy partly drawn up by President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s brother, the Defense Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

About 300,000 civilians were trapped on a narrow beach during the onslaught and the UN panel has estimated that 40,000 non-combatants died.  Although both sides are alleged to have committed atrocities, the panel concluded that army shelling killed most civilian victims.

Since the end of the war, harassment of government critics, including attacks on journalists and human rights workers have continued. A heavy army presence in the former Tamil Tiger strongholds in the north of the country angers contributes to tensions with local ethnic Tamils, who feel they are treated as enemies of the state.

On Sunday, UK Channel 4 News said it had obtained new evidence which it, and Tamil campaigners, have said demonstrated that an underlying culture of systematic brutality and sexual violence existed within the ranks of the Sri Lankan military.

The footage was reported to have been filmed by a soldier on a mobile phone, and was said to show troops laughing and cheering as they celebrated the deaths of Tamil insurgents.  The footage also depicts the soldiers performing acts of grotesque sexual violation on the bodies.

Channel 4 News has continued to report on what it said was evidence, in the form of various pieces of footage, of the apparently systematic execution and sexual violation of prisoners.

The Sri Lankan government has claimed that the footage was doctored, manipulated, or falsified by Tamil insurgents dressed as government soldiers and speaking Sinhala, the language of the vast majority of government soldiers.

For more information, please see:

The Guardian–Britain joins call for UN to investigate alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka–9 March 2014

Australia Network News–Sri Lanka warns against UN war crimes inquiries–11 March 2014

Times Sri Lanka–Protests in Geneva for Sri Lanka war crimes probe–11 March 2014

Arab News–4,000 Tamils protest in Geneva for Sri Lanka war crimes probe–10 March 2014

UK 4 News–Sri Lanka: new video evidence of grotesque violations–9 March 2014