Japan moves towards a debate on ending the death penalty

By Shane Green, 

December 2 2002

Early one Wednesday in September Yoshiteru Hamada and Tatsuya Haruta received the news they had dreaded: within hours they would die.

The convicted murderers were among 50 prisoners on death row who had had their sentences confirmed. There was perhaps time to write a letter or tidy their belongings. And then to the gallows.

The day they were executed was September18, the day after North Korea's Kim Jong-il had stunned the Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, by admitting his agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese nationals, eight of whom were dead.

Normally, executions are carried out on a Friday with little media coverage. But the saturation reporting of the kidnappings on this particular Wednesday apparently made it too good an opportunity to miss.

"It was quite unlikely the Government would be criticised in the media," said Makoto Teranaka, the secretary-general of Amnesty International in Japan, which is campaigning for the death penalty to be abolished.

And that was exactly what happened.

Yet in the past week things have started to change. The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has called for a moratorium on the death penalty so the nation can have a debate it has avoided.

In the Diet, the national parliament, the 121 MPs who form its bipartisan League for the Abolition of the Death Penalty will introduce legislation next year to establish a commission to study the issue. The group is also proposing the introduction of life imprisonment without parole to replace capital punishment.

About 100 prisoners in Japanese jails have been sentenced to death, usually for aggravated murder. Half have had their sentences confirmed.

The death penalty is carried out on the order of the justice ministry, or, in effect, whoever happens to be the justice minister. From 1989 to 1992 those who held the job exercised their own discretion and no one was executed.

Then in 1993 seven prisoners went to the gallows. Since then anywhere between two and six have been hanged each year.

Life on death row has its own miseries. Amnesty says visitors are restricted to family. "It is quite nearly incommunicado detention," Makoto Teranaka says. "This kind of isolation is itself a cruel punishment or treatment."

Then there is the uncertainty of who will be next. Sakae Menda, who was acquitted in 1983 after 30 years on death row, has told of the "constant dread". His anguished outbursts led him to being handcuffed to a metal belt around his waist for two months.

The Government cites opinion polls that show strong public support for the death penalty as a deterrent to serious crime.

But Professor Nobuyoshi Toshitani of Tokyo Keizai University said he had rarely seen academic papers that tried to prove the death penalty was a deterrent

. "I assume many believe this, but we need to examine and discuss it at a national level."

There is also international pressure. The Council of Europe (not linked to the European Union) has set a deadline of next month for Japan and the US to make progress on the death penalty or lose observer status at the council.