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
