RIGHTS-JAPAN: Crimes Fuel Support for Death Penalty

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Dec 7 1999 (IPS) - Hiroko Nagahara, 46, says she used to be a silent supporter of Japan’s struggling movement for the abolition of the death penalty, but not any more.

“It’s hard to say you are against capital punishment these days when there are so many brutal murders being committed by horrible people. The death penalty is a way of bringing justice to innocent victims,” explains Nagahara, manager of a large furniture shop.

Nagahara’s view reflects growing public support in Japan for the death penalty.

Last week, the Prime Minister’s Office reported that a survey has revealed that almost 80 percent of people polled nationwide, up from 74 percent in 1994, expressed approval for Japan’s continuation of the use of capital punishment.

The figure is an all-time high among six such polls conducted since 1956.

Results of the poll, which was conducted in September after a five-year lapse and covered 5,000 men and women aged 20 years or older, also showed that support for scrapping the death penalty has dipped to a mere 8 percent. This is the first time the figure has fallen below the 10 percent mark.

Almost half the respondents, who were asked to select why they favoured the death penalty from a variety of answers, wrote that perpetrators of serious crimes should lose their lives in order to atone for their wrong doings.

Also 48.2 percent said more crimes would be committed if the death penalty was abolished, and 48.6 percent said that victims and their families would not be satisfied unless those convicted of crimes against them were executed.

The survey’s results, as in indicator of public attitude, have been a blow to the movement to get the Japanese government to take up the United Nations convention to abolish capital punishment, which marks its 10th anniversary this month.

Lawyers favouring the abolition of capital punishment say public support for death penalty recently has been shaped by outrage over crimes such as the Aum religious cult’s sarin gas attack, and a curry poisoning case in which a housewife is accused of pouring arsenic into curry that killed consumers.

Twelve people were killed and 5,000 sickened by the release of the nerve gas on Tokyo subways on Mar 20, 1995, a crime that shocked the public and ended Japan’s international record as a safe society.

“There is fear and anger against the wave of recent crimes that have been committed without a clear motive or target,” explains Kyoko Otani, a lawyer appearing for some victims of the sarin gas attack.

“Japanese society is leaning heavily on the death penalty because the government offers the law as the only security against a wave of new types of crime,” Otani explains.

Otani says that the families she represents in the sarin case are supportive of the death penalty for the perpetrators. “They believe that by asking for death of the perpetrator they have protected the rights of the victim,” she says.

The number of criminals sent to the gallows number between four to six each year at present, according to the Justice Ministry.

The White Paper on crime reports that Japan’s annual crime rate is rising. It says there is a total of 12,366 cases of serious crimes such as arson, rape and kidnapping in 1997, or 1,080 more than the previous year. Homicide cases numbered 1,218, up from 1,282 in 1996.

Japanese judges usually cite remorse on the part of the offender as a condition for not imposing the death penalty.

Murders where criminals are proven to have killed more than one person, and cases where they are involved in both murder and robbery, are also handed the death sentence.

With Japan now in the middle of reorganising its judicial network, activists fear that the latest survey will delay a long awaited move to bring about a national debate on the subject.

Akira Ishikawa of Amnesty International Japan explains that Japan’s Justice Minister, Hideo Usui, himself a supporter of the death penalty, has promised that the government would deal speedily with AUM religious cult.

Aum leaders are “showing no repentance for their past actions and are continuing their activities in various parts of the country, which is worrying people,” he told reporters.

He was explaining the reason for a new law to be passed in the Japanese Diet that would pave the way for closer surveillance of organisations such as the Aum cult.

Japan is also considering lowering the age limit for youth offenders subject to criminal charges — now pegged at 20 years of age. Usui supports this move.

Both steps however worry activists who say they are fighting for a system that allows murderers a chance to be rehabilitated.

“The (results of the) recent survey (in favour of the death penalty) will not stop us,” says Sayako Kikuchi of the Anti- Execution Organisation which has around 600 supporters including lawyers and academics.

“The main reason why the Japanese public continues to support the death penalty is because people do not understand the issue as it should be understood. We are trying hard to educate the people better,” Kickuchi points out.

Along with other groups, Kikuchi has been campaigning for more information to be offered to the public on executions carried out in the country.

They point out that executions are held in secrecy and reported briefly in the media only after they are carried out.

Prisoners are usually told of impending execution as they are taken out of their cells to go to the place of execution, critics say. Often, even the executed person’s family learns of the relative’s fate through the newspapers, say activists.

Kikuchi points to some signs that signal how some victims’ families, given the chance, do turn away from execution as a means of justice.

Last year, Masumi Fukuda, who forgave the murderer of his younger brother after exchanging letters with him, wrote a book entitled ‘Saredo Ware Shokei O Nozomuzu’ ( ‘It’s Hard, But I Do Not Want Execution’).

Also last year, then justice minister Shozaburo Nakamura said during a visit to an execution facility: “My visit showed how very serious the death sentence is. I cannot help but be more sympathetic to the condemned.”