JAPAN’S DEATH row has come in for withering criticism from Amnesty International, which says inmates have been driven toward insanity while awaiting execution.
At least five of Japan’s 102 condemned prisoners are mentally ill, says Amnesty, with many more elderly inmates on the brink of senility. Secrecy and lack of independent scrutiny means that the exact number is unknown.
“The government has a policy of not allowing access to prisoners on death row, and denied Amnesty International’s request for access,” says the human rights body, which called the system “shameful.”
Opponents of the death penalty say Japan is bucking a worldwide trend toward abolition, despite condemnation from the Council of Europe, the United Nations and a growing lobby of local critics.
Although Japan incarcerates far fewer citizens per capita than the UK or Ireland, its astonishing 99 per cent conviction rate means campaigners fear that the condemned almost certainly include innocent individuals.
Condemned inmates are deprived of contact with the outside world, kept in solitary confinement and forced to wait an average of more than seven years, sometimes decades, in toilet-sized cells while the legal system grinds on. When the order eventually comes, the condemned have just minutes to get their affairs in order before facing the noose. Because the order can come at any time, they live each day believing it may be their last.
Amnesty’s UK director Kate Allen yesterday called the system a “regime of silence, isolation and sheer non-existence”, singling out the same-day execution notice as “utterly cruel”.
The hangmen are undeterred by age, senility or handicap: the condemned include 83-year-old Masaru Okunishi, who has for more than four decades protested his innocence of poisoning five women.
Amnesty says 32 people have been hanged since January 2006, – including five men in their 70s. Seven people have been hanged so far this year, including Chinese national Cheng Detong, who was “quasi-insane”, his defence said.
Opinion polls show little support for abolition. A 2005 government survey found more than 80 per cent of Japanese people “in favour” of executions (in “unavoidable circumstances”), a rise of more than 23 per cent since the mid-1970s.
Abolitionists hope the incoming Democratic government of Yukio Hatoyama will debate scrapping the death penalty.
Mr Hatoyama’s brother, Kunio, was famously dubbed “the grim reaper” for his enthusiastic support for hanging while serving as justice minister.