TAEDP: A step backward for Asia: Japan resumes executions (July 29, 2010)
Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty July 29, 2010
Press release (中文 / 日本語 )
A step backward for Asia: Japan resumes executions
After a nearly year-long hiatus in executions, on July 28th Japan executed Kazuo Shinozawa and Hidenori Ogata at the Tokyo Detention Center. Minister of Justice Keiko Chiba not only signed the execution orders, but attended the executions. The Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty condemns Japan’s decision to resume executions and is deeply disappointed in Minister Chiba, who has formerly advocated ending the death penalty.
Japan is an advanced country and a global leader in many respects, yet its death penalty record is atrocious. The International Federation of Human Rights (Fédération Internationale des ligues des Droits de l'Homme, FIDH) details this record in its 2008 report titled “The Death Penalty in Japan: The Law of Silence.”
Directly following the executions, Minister Chiba told a press conference that a committee would be formed under her ministry to research the death penalty, and that journalists would be allowed to visit the execution chamber, which was in the past closed to the media.
Japan’s executions are shrouded in secrecy — a fact that has long drawn concern and condemnation from human rights groups. The public is thus prevented from knowing even basic facts about the execution of capital punishment, making an informed dialogue on whether to keep the death penalty impossible.
Allowing journalists to visit the execution chamber is only one small step. The Japanese government must allow much greater transparency on the matter of capital punishment.
In April, Taiwan resumed executions after a four-year unofficial moratorium, sparking international concern. Like the Japanese minister of justice, Taiwanese Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu had previously spoken in favor of scrapping the death penalty, and has set up a committee under the ministry to research capital punishment. Both ministers once expressed serious reservations about capital punishment, yet later signed execution warrants — and firmly stood by their actions.
Past Japanese and Taiwanese justice ministers who opposed the death penalty refused to sign execution orders. In a recent radio interview, Minister Tseng said it was not necessarily against the law to decline to sign execution orders, as his two predecessors had done. In the face of a system riddled with holes, a moratorium on this irreversible penalty is the ministry’s best course of action.
In 2007 and 2008, the UN General Assembly passed resolutions calling for a global moratorium on executions. It is expected to do so again in December. We urge the governments of Taiwan and Japan to resume moratoriums, and call on all Asian countries to join the majority of the world’s countries (139 to date) that have stopped carrying out executions. We regret that they cannot look to Taiwan and Japan for leadership on this issue.