BY ALASTAIR WANKLYN
Cars pass on the Bayshore Route of the Shuto Expressway in Tokyo. Only 20 countries have executed prisoners so far this year. | ISTOCK
Japanese lawyers positioned
themselves against the death penalty on Friday, as the Japan Federation of Bar
Associations called for abolition of a punishment that critics say is uniquely
cruel and vengeful.
JFBA members approved a
declaration that seeks to abolish the death penalty by 2020 and to replace it
with life imprisonment, a change that will bring Japan into line with most
other developed nations.
The JFBA represents around
37,600 Japanese lawyers and hundreds of foreign legal professionals. In the
past it has expressed unease over the death penalty but has stopped short of
taking a stand against it.
Friday’s move will set the
legal profession against the government, which has executed 16 people since
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to power in 2012.
In a joint statement, the
European Union and the Norwegian, Icelandic and Swiss embassies called the
JFBA’s decision “timely and welcome.”
“We hope that an open, public
debate on this issue in Japan will follow, allowing the people of Japan to
weigh for themselves the evidence from a growing number of countries . . . that
an abolition of death penalty can actually strengthen the capacity of judicial
systems to effectively deliver justice and, at the same time, prevent
irreversible miscarriages of justice,” they said.
The move was welcomed by
activists, who say the death penalty is error-prone and leaves prisoners with
no opportunity for rehabilitation.
“Capital punishment in all
cases should be abolished because the inherent dignity of the person cannot be
squared with the death penalty, a form of punishment unique in its cruelty and
finality,” Kanae Doi of the Tokyo branch of Human Rights Watch said Friday.
“The death penalty is widely
rejected by rights-respecting democracies around the world and I see no reason
why Japan cannot follow the stream. I welcome the JFBA restarting the
discussion in this direction.”
EU governments have been
lobbying hard for Japan to end executions. British, French and Italian
diplomats press the case regularly in their meetings with lawyers, legislators
and journalists.
Some European diplomats
privately express frustration that abolition is not even a subject of public
debate in Japan.
The French Embassy in Tokyo
said Friday it hopes that discussion will now emerge.
“We have been calling on Japan
to introduce a moratorium for many years,” the embassy said in a statement. “In
this respect, we salute the declaration of the JFBA. The death penalty is a
moral issue, but it is also necessary to question its usefulness.”
Japan is one of only two Group
of Seven nations that retain the death penalty.
In the U.S., figures show the
trend is slowing. Executions in the U.S. this year are on track to be the
lowest in 25 years, and the trend is matched by a sharp decline in the number
of death sentences passed by American courts.
Japan’s death row prisoners
are usually kept in solitary confinement and are required to stay silent,
conditions that critics call both inhumane and excessively punitive.
Doubts about the reliability
of convictions have been fueled by cases such as that of Iwao Hakamada. He was
sentenced to death in 1968 in a case based on evidence apparently fabricated by
police.
Hakamada was freed in 2014 but
now lives with severe mental impairments after more than four decades on death
row.
In 2015 Japan executed three
prisoners. That year, the case of 89-year-old Masaru Okunishi also drew
attention. He died in the hospital after 46 years on death row, fighting to
clear his name in the murders of five women. He said his confessions were
forced and sought a retrial on nine occasions.
No comments:
Post a Comment