Amnesty International Report 1997 - Japan

Conditions of detention for all prisoners remained harsh, often amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Reports persisted of ill-treatment of prisoners and of foreign nationals detained at border points. Ninety prisoners remained under sentence of death. Six prisoners were executed. Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi resigned in January and was replaced by Hashimoto Ryutaro, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), one of three parties in the ruling coalition. General elections in October gave the LDP enough seats to form a minority government, still led by Hashimoto Ryutaro, without entering into a coalition but with outside support from its former coalition partners, the Social Democratic Party of Japan and the New Party Sakigake. The new LDP cabinet pledged itself to a program of administrative reform, particularly in economic affairs. The Minister of Justice, Matsuura Isao, stated that his priority would be to fight corruption. In February, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women published a report on the government's responsibility towards so-called "comfort women" – women forced into prostitution by the Japanese army during the Second World War. About 200,000 women, mostly from east and southeast Asia, were subjected to sexual slavery during the war. The Special Rapporteur's report called on the Japanese Government to acknowledge moral and legal responsibility for human rights violations against these women, to apologize, to provide compensation and to bring to justice those responsible for the recruitment and ill-treatment of the women. The government strongly criticized the Special Rapporteur's report and stood by its 1995 decision not to use state funds to pay compensation. In August, a private fund which had been set up in 1995 at the government's instigation (see Amnesty International Report 1996) started to send payments to some of the women. Most of them refused to accept the payments, continuing to criticize the government's refusal to accept moral and legal responsibility. Conditions of detention remained harsh and humiliating for all prisoners, and often constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Among other rules, prisoners were not allowed to look at or speak to each other except during short rest periods, and were forbidden to speak to guards unless invited to do so. Minor infringements of the rules could lead to weeks in solitary confinement, where prisoners were often forced to sit still in a specified position for hours on end. Punishment could also involve solitary confinement in "protective cells" with padded walls, in which prisoners had to wear, sometimes for days on end, special belts which prevented them from moving their arms. Lawyers reported that more than 100 prisoners had initiated lawsuits claiming government compensation for alleged ill-treatment and excessively humiliating or harsh treatment. In September, a prisoner was awarded compensation by the Kumamoto District Court for the "mental pain" he suffered when the Kumamoto Prison authorities refused him permission to mail more than one letter per month to his daughter. In October, the parents of a man who died in a "protective cell" in July initiated legal proceedings for compensation, on the grounds that his human rights had been violated. The detainee, who was serving a two-month sentence for a driving offence, died a few days after being put in a "protective cell" in Hamada, Shimane Prefecture, reportedly as a punishment for being "noisy and violent". The outcome of the proceedings was not known by the end of the year. Foreign nationals alleged that they were ill-treated while detained at border points pending expulsion. In October, a Danish national of Iranian origin was reportedly detained at Narita Airport, near Tokyo, when a border control official questioned the authenticity of his Danish passport. When he refused to sign a statement admitting that he was carrying forged documents, he was reportedly slapped, beaten about the head with a heavy cardboard roll and kicked in the legs by an immigration officer. He was also forced to pay a "fee" for staying in the transit area where he was detained. He was held for 24 hours and then deported to Malaysia. Six people were executed during the year; all had spent more than 10 years awaiting execution and claimed that they were not informed of their right to the assistance of a lawyer during pre-trial interrogation. In July, Ishida Mikio was executed in Tokyo, and Yoshiaki Sugimoto and Yokoyama Kazumi in the southern city of Fukuoka. Ishida Mikio had been sentenced to death in 1982 for robbery and murder; his sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 1988. He had unsuccessfully sought a retrial, claiming, among other things, that he had been given no access to a lawyer in the early stages of his pre-trial detention. Yoshiaki Sugimoto and Yokoyama Kazumi had also been sentenced to death in 1982. In December, Hirata Mitsunari, Imai Yoshito and Satoru Noguchi were executed in Tokyo. The new Minister of Justice broke with a tradition of secrecy by acknowledging that he had signed the warrant of execution concerning the three men hanged in December. However, no prior notice of the execution was given to the lawyers or relatives of the prisoners. Ninety prisoners remained under sentence of death at the end of the year, including some 52 whose sentences were confirmed by the Supreme Court. Four prisoners had their death sentence commuted to life imprisonment during the year. Three death sentences were passed by district courts during the year, but they had not been confirmed by the Supreme Court by the end of the year. Amnesty International expressed regret at the execution of the six men in July and December and criticized the secrecy surrounding the death penalty.