Harsh Conditions for Death Row Prisoners in Japan

Hakamada Iwao, aged 73, wakes up every day in the knowledge that it could be his last. The arrival of the prison officer with a death warrant would mean that he would be put to death within hours. He has been waiting on death row for 41 years.

And he is not alone. 102 condemned inmates are awaiting execution in Japanese prisons. In a recent report, Amnesty International says that at least five of them have become mentally ill due to the pressure this insecurity creates.

Condemned inmates are deprived of all contact with the outside world. They are kept in solitary confinement in cells no larger than a toilet, forced to wait for an average of seven years before they are executed.

Are mentally ill prisoners executed?

Amnesty says 32 people have been hanged since January 2006, including five men in their seventies. Seven people have been hanged this year, including Chen Detong, a Chinese national dubbed by his defence lawyer as "quasi insane" at the time he committed his crime.

International human rights standards forbid the execution of mentally ill people. James Welsh, Amnesty’s health expert and the lead author of the report, explains that "there are some important international standards to protect people facing the death penalty, and those standards include protection of vulnerable population such as pregnant women, children and people with serious mental disorders. Our case towards the government of Japan is that they should ensure that they practice international standards."

No transparency

Japan’s criminal procedure code says if a person sentenced to death is insane, the execution should be postponed by the justice minister. Shunji Miyake, a criminal lawyer from Tokyo, says "it is hard to say whether or not people with mental disorders are executed since nobody knows. It is strictly secret. According to a media report there are some cases where prisoners have been detained for more than five years or more. So we can expect that some people might be mentally ill but we can’t say anything in certain."

James Welsh from Amnesty says transparency is a general concern: "The system in Japan is very secret. For example it’s only recently that the government has even given the names of those people who have been executed at the time of the executions, so one has to ask how much is known about the death penalty in reality."

Amnesty has appealed to the Democratic Party of Japan or DPJ, which leads the new government, to implement an immediate moratorium on all further executions. In its election manifesto, the DPJ said it would "encourage a national debate" on capital punishment. But it has stopped short of promising to join the growing number of countries that have abolished the death penalty, not least because a majority of Japanese support this form of punishment.

Author: Debarati Mukherjee
Editor: Grahame Lucas