Japan: Execution chamber to open to media as early as August 2010

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Justice Ministry will open the execution chamber at the Tokyo Detention House to the media as early as August, Justice Minister Keiko Chiba said Friday.

Secretive practices surrounding the capital punishment system in Japan, including executions without prior notice to death row inmates, their families and lawyers, have drawn criticism.

Tokyo Detention House

Execution chambers in Japan have been closed to the public, including the media, but Chiba has ordered the Tokyo detention facility to allow media access in order to stir public debate over the death penalty.

She told a press conference after a Cabinet meeting Friday that a panel to study the death penalty will be established next month under the justice minister to discuss the overall system of capital punishment.

The announcement came after Chiba, who once belonged to a group of lawmakers against the death penalty, ordered the execution by hanging of two death row inmates and, in an unusual move, witnessed the executions herself Wednesday.

After attending the executions, Chiba said at a press conference, "I felt anew the need to fundamentally discuss the issue of capital punishment."

On Friday, she rejected suggestions she had been persuaded by Justice Ministry officials to sign the execution orders, saying, "It's not true. I recognized that I had such a duty when assuming the justice portfolio."

She also said the view she held as a former member of the Japan Parliamentary League against the Death Penalty that abolishing capital punishment is one option "will never change," indicating she remains in favor of its abolition.

The Geneva-based Human Rights Committee urged Japan in 2008 to consider terminating the death penalty regardless of domestic public opinion, which favors its maintenance.

"Regardless of opinion polls, the state party (Japan) should favorably consider abolishing the death penalty and inform the public, as necessary, about the desirability of abolition," it said in its report.

A Japanese government survey showed in February that a record 85.6 percent of respondents consider continuing capital punishment as "unavoidable."

According to Amnesty, 139 countries, or more than two-thirds of them, have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice so far.

Source: Mainichi Japan, July 30, 2010