RIGHTS-JAPAN: Deaths in Custody Highlight Abuses in Prisons

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Dec 5 2002 (IPS) - The deaths of two inmates and revelations of torture of prisoners have again brought to the fore the inhumane conditions and poor human rights record in Japanese prisons, concerns repeatedly raised by rights watchdogs and ignored by authorities.

”While Japan may be a leader in the industrialised and democratic world, its human rights record can only improve from international pressure,” says Yuichi Kaido, director of the Centre for Prisoners’ Rights, a non-governmental organisation with more than 700 members.

The group, along with other human rights activists, has long campaigned for a ban on the cruel restraining practices exercised in Japanese prisons, where serious rights breaches are said to be common.

Last month, five guards at the Nagoya prison, the site of a series of cases of abuse, were arrested on suspicion of fatally beating a 30-year-old inmate while he was handcuffed.

The incident occurred last September and followed the death of a 49-year old inmate in May at the same prison.

Official reports say the men were bound with restraining leather belts with attached leather manacles, commonly used in Japanese correction cells. The man who died in May succumbed to acute heart failure two hours after being manacled.

The media has also reported five other suspicious deaths at the notorious prison.

While the use of the device has decreased in some prisons, the Nagoya prison has recorded an increase in its use – from 53 in 2001 to 148 so far this year.

Akihiko Maeda, one of the prison guards arrested over one of the deaths in custody, said the motive behind restraining the prisoner was ”justifiable”.

According to activists, inmates are put into solitary confinement if deemed unruly, trying to escape or suicidal. Prisoners have complained the system is arbitrary given the harsh in-house rules governing Japanese prisons.

A former inmate told the Japanese press recently that guards can punish prisoners for various types of behaviour they consider unruly, such as looking up during meal times which is prohibited in prisons.

The use of leather restraining devices has been criticised by the U.N. Human Rights Commission as ”cruel and inhuman”.

Indeed victims have described the experience as excruciating. A former inmate who served time in a solitary protection correction cell told the Japanese media: ”I thought I was dying” in describing his experience after being thrown in a cell after a minor quarrel with guards.

”I was determined not to show any pain and was sitting quietly in the cell, when they came in and tightened the leather belt and straps. I began to sweat and could not breathe,” he said.

Kaido says former inmates who were tortured while in detention have begun to sue Japanese prisons. This despite the odds, as only about five cases out of an average of 70 cases filed annually, win.

The Tokyo District Court awarded damages in June to an American who spent the night in a solitary cell with restraints on in Tokyo’s Fuchu prison. The verdict declared the use of the device was unnecessary.

Activists are calling for an overhaul of the Japanese prison system, which has not adjusted to growing social changes in the country, they say.

”Respecting human rights is long overdue in Japan,” says Kaido, who is calling on the Justice Ministry to set-up a 24-hour video and an independent body to keep watch on abuses by prison authorities.

Japan has 189 prisons with 65,000 inmates, and prisons have 14.4 percent more inmates than they can handle.

Koichi Kikuta, professor of law at Meiji University says the prison population is greying fast, with inmates over 60 years old comprising almost 10 ten percent of the prison population.

The Justice Ministry reported 193 inmates in detention houses developed full-blown tuberculosis between 1997 and 2001, a rate more than twice the national average – a record linked to the rising age of inmates.

Other human rights violations, according to Kikuta, are that prisoners cannot subscribe to newspapers, can write only one letter a month to relatives, and all letters including those to their lawyers are subject to censorship with deletions common.

Handcuffed prisoners often have to eat their meals and sleep without the devices being removed, treatment designed to ignore the humanity of the victim, says Kikuta.

Activists plan to put more pressure on the government, with the help from opposition politicians, to bring about urgent changes in the way prisons are run.

Rights campaigner Kaido is against a new human rights protection bill being proposed by the government as it would imply an extra departmental organisation being created by the Justice Ministry, which he said, would not have the authority to stamp out injustices in prisons.

”If the bill remains as it is, there is no hope of preventing human rights abuses because it will not be able to act independently. People will not put their faith in this bill,” he explained.

RIGHTS-JAPAN: Deaths in Custody Highlight Abuses in Prisons

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Dec 5 2002 (IPS) - The deaths of two inmates and revelations of torture of prisoners have again brought to the fore the inhumane conditions and poor human rights record in Japanese prisons, concerns repeatedly raised by rights watchdogs and ignored by authorities.
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