Japan: Executions - Continuing The Secret And Cruel Practice
21 June 2001
Amnesty International is concerned that the Japanese Government will carry out executions on or around 29 June 2001
when the parliament goes into recess, or before the Upper House elections scheduled for 29 July. The Japanese government
has earlier carried out executions during periods of parliamentary recess, parliamentary elections and holiday periods.
Amnesty International believes that the government chooses these periods to avoid debate within parliament and to
minimize publicity.
In the coming days, Japan faces international scrutiny over its use of the death penalty. Executions in Japan will on
the agenda at the First World Congress against the Death Penalty in Strasbourg this week, and a resolution calling on
Japan to declare an immediate moratorium on executions or risk losing it's Observer Status at the Council of Europe will
be debated at the Council's Assembly on Monday. The resolution is based on a recent report on the abolition of the death
penalty in Council of Europe observer states which was adopted by the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights on 5
June 2001 in Paris.
Executions in Japan are arbitrary and are carried out in secret. The prisoner is told less than two hours before
execution, and the families and lawyers are never told of the decision to carry out the death penalty. Most prisoners
are under sentence of death for many years, and endure considerable mental distress. There are at least 110 people under
sentence of death in Japan, some 50 of whom have had their sentences upheld by the Supreme Court (or become final in the
lower courts) and can be executed at any time. The oldest prisoner is aged 84 and has spent 29 years under sentence of
death; another prisoner is 70 and has spent 32 years in death row. There are at least 12 others who have spent over 20
years under sentence of death. The practice of not informing prisoners until the last hour of their execution deprives
them of the opportunity to meet with family for final farewells, and makes it impossible for lawyers to file last-minute
appeals.
The Japanese government has continuously ignored the recommendations of the United Nations Human Rights Committee which
has expressed over the years grave concern at the number of crimes punishable by death. The Committee has restated its
recommendation that Japan take legal measures to abolish the death penalty in practice and in law. The Committee had
also expressed its serious concern at the conditions under which persons are held in death row, and had concluded that
the undue restrictions on visits of the family and lawyers and the failure to notify them of executions of the prisoners
on death row were incompatible with the International Covenant on Civil and Poltical Rights.
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty as a violation of the fundamental right to life and considers it to be
the ultimate form of cruel and inhuman punishment. Amnesty International calls on the Japanese government to declare an
immediate moratorium on all executions and to abolish the death penalty in Japanese law.
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