Amnesty International Report 1995 - Japan

Two prisoners were executed in secret. Scores of others were still on death row after more than 20 years. There were continuing reports of ill-treatment of prisoners and of suspects in police custody. Asylum-seekers continued to be at risk because of the authorities' failure to fulfil their international obligations towards refugees and asylum-seekers. The Liberal Democratic Party, which had ruled Japan for most of the post-war period until 1993, re-entered the government in August as part of a tripartite coalition led by Social Democratic Party chairman Murayama Tomiichi who became Prime Minister. In a package of political reform laws adopted by the Diet (parliament) in November, the electoral system was changed. In August the Prime Minister suggested that measures be considered to compensate women from several east and southeast Asian countries who had been forced into prostitution by the Japanese armed forces or their agents during World War II. Proposed legislation to set up a compensation fund was delayed in November; no action had been taken by the end of the year. In November an all-party association of Diet members urged the government to call a five-year moratorium on the death penalty, encourage debate about its abolition and disseminate relevant information to the public. However, Prime Minister Murayama refused to take such an initiative. In December the Minister of Justice stated that his ministry was considering publishing more information on the death penalty. In December Ajima Yukio and Sasaki Kazumitsu were executed. They had both been convicted of murder. Ajima Yukio had been held on death row for 16 years in Tokyo Detention Centre. In keeping with established practice, the executions were carried out in secret and were not announced to the relatives or the lawyers of the prisoners; the prisoners themselves were believed to have been given only a few hours' notice before their hanging. About 90 prisoners were on death row at the end of the year, including 57 whose death sentences had been confirmed by the Supreme Court. At least four had been on death row for more than 20 years. There were numerous reports of ill-treatment of detainees by police and prison guards. In May Kanazawa Hitoshi, a former prosecutor from the Sendai District Public Prosecutor's Office, was given a suspended sentence of two years' imprisonment for assaulting witnesses in October 1993 during an investigation into corruption. He had been dismissed in November 1993. In June and October two other prosecutors, Masuda Yasuo and Shinbo Hitoshi, both from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office, resigned after being suspended for three months for alleged ill-treatment of suspects during interrogation. These incidents led the Minister of Justice to formally discipline Public Prosecutor General Yoshinaga Yusuke for lack of adequate supervision. However, no changes were made to legislation and practices which allow the lengthy detention of suspects in police custody and have led to frequent reports that interrogators had beaten, kicked and threatened suspects to extract confessions from them. Mehrpooran Arjang, an Iranian national, died in June in Manamisenju Police Station in Tokyo, a day after being arrested on suspicion of illegal residence. His wife alleged that he had been beaten by police; an autopsy reportedly indic-ated that he had suffered several internal haemorrhages. A suit for compensation filed against the government by Mehrpooran Arjang's relatives was still pending at the end of the year. In November Yahia Radwan Allam, an Egyptian national, filed a suit against the government alleging that he had been beaten in March while in solitary confinement at the Tokyo Detention House (TDH). He alleged that blows inflicted by guards left his hearing impaired and that he had contracted a skin disease following a previous period of solitary confinement in unsanitary conditions in October 1993. Another TDH detainee from Nigeria alleged in a suit also brought in November that he had been ill-treated on three occasions between February and August. On the last occasion he alleged he had been repeatedly thrown on the floor and against a wall by several guards, suffering as a result from prolonged bleeding and back pain. In December Akiyama Takeshi, a former immigration officer, told the press that he had witnessed several cases of ill-treatment of foreigners while working at a detention centre in Tokyo in 1993. He alleged that foreign detainees who did not obey orders had been taken to isolation rooms and repeatedly beaten and threatened. Former detainees, their relatives and lawyers later confirmed these allegations. The Ministry of Justice said it had investigated Akiyama Takeshi's allegations and found them groundless. The investigation was reportedly carried out by Immigration Bureau officials over a weekend. It appeared to be neither independent nor impartial. In November, 11 asylum-seekers from Myanmar had their applications denied on the basis of the "60-days rule", under which applications can normally be considered only when submitted within 60 days of an asylum-seeker's arrival in Japan, with no consideration of the substance of their claim by the authorities. Guidelines by the Executive Committee of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees prohibit governments from denying requests for asylum on the sole basis of the failure of asylum-seekers to meet administrative requirements. In January Amnesty International published a report entitled Japan: Asylum-Seekers Still at Risk, outlining the organization's continuing concerns about Japan's laws and practices on the treatment of asylum-seekers. This followed a statement by the government dismissing as incorrect an earlier report on the same concerns published by Amnesty International in March 1993 (see Amnesty International Report 1994). In July Amnesty International published Japan: An Agenda for Human Rights, an open letter to the then newly appointed Prime Minister, urging that the death penalty be abolished, asylum-seekers be better protected and ill-treatment of suspects in police custody be ended. It also urged the government to ratify the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and other relevant international human rights standards. By the end of the year the government had neither replied to Amnesty International, nor implemented any of these recommendations.