Amnesty International said Thursday "cruel, inhuman and degrading" conditions for Japan's death row prisoners were tipping many into insanity and urged an incoming government to halt all executions. The London-based human rights group said 97 inmates were awaiting death by hanging in Japan, with no idea if or when they would be put to death, leading to a state of uncertainty that creates enormous mental stress.
"They are forced to await execution every day, facing a sentence that could be enforced at only a few hours' notice," the group said. "Each day could be their last and the arrival of a prison officer with a death warrant would signal their execution within hours. Some live like this year after year, sometimes for decades."
In Japan, neither death row prisoners nor their families or lawyers are informed in advance of when the execution will be carried out. "To allow a prisoner to live for prolonged periods under the daily threat of imminent death is cruel, inhuman and degrading," said James Welsh, Amnesty's health expert and lead author of the report.
"The treatment imposed on condemned inmates in Japan means that they face a high risk of developing a serious mental illness while on death row." The Amnesty report was issued as a new centre-left government prepares to take power in Japan next Wednesday, following its landslide victory over the long-ruling conservatives in elections last month.
The Democratic Party of Japan said in its campaign manifesto that it would "encourage national debate on capital punishment," which Japan imposes mostly for multiple homicide convicts.
Surveys suggest overwhelming public support for capital punishment in a country where police boast a near-perfect conviction rate. Amnesty called Japan's use of capital punishment "an anomaly" among the majority of developed nations, pointing also to the country's relatively low crime, murder and imprisonment rates.
Makoto Teranaka, chief of the Japan chapter of Amnesty International, told AFP: "We will take action to demand a moratorium on executions, with the ultimate goal of abolishing the death penalty." But he added that "we are not necessarily optimistic about the incoming administration. Views on the death penalty vary significantly among its politicians, as was the case for the outgoing government."
The Amnesty report painted a grim picture of conditions for death row prisoners and called for urgent change. "They are isolated from other prisoners, isolated from the guards who are forbidden to converse with them, and isolated from the outside world," it said.
Amnesty said it found that prisoners on death row were not allowed to talk to one another, and that contact with relatives, lawyers and others could be restricted to as little as five minutes at a time. "Apart from visits to the toilet, prisoners are not allowed to move around the cell and must remain seated," the group said.
"Death row prisoners are less likely than other prisoners to have access to fresh air and light and are likely to suffer additional punishments because of behaviour that may infringe the strict rules imposed on them." They also suffer censorship of their correspondence and limited access to educational opportunities and reading or video material, the report said.
Amnesty concluded that Japan's "prisoners are subjected to a regime of particular harshness." "Prisoners who breach disciplinary rules - by, for example, moving within the cell at times when this is prohibited, making a noise or otherwise creating a disturbance - may be subjected to detention in a punishment cell where conditions are even harsher than in the normal cell," the report said. Added Welsh: "These inhuman conditions increase a prisoner's anxiety and anguish and in many cases push prisoners over the edge and into a state of mental illness."