Execution chamber at Tokyo Detention House opened to media+

TOKYO, Aug. 27 Kyodo -
The Justice Ministry opened the execution chamber at the Tokyo Detention House
to the media Friday, allowing reporters to take still and moving images for the
first time, under the instruction of Justice Minister Keiko Chiba.
During the 30-minute visit, reporters stepped into the five rooms of the
chamber, such as the execution room equipped with a trap footplate and a pulley
to hang death row inmates and the so-called ''button room'' equipped with three
buttons to operate the trap footplate.
The ministry has rarely opened execution chambers, other than inspections by
lawmakers, saying, ''It is not appropriate to open the chambers to the public
as they are solemn places.''
The latest move is expected to open a crack in breaking the secrecy surrounding
Japan's capital punishment system and to stir demand for further information
disclosure over the death penalty, such as how to pick up death row inmates to
hang and how to treat them in their daily lives.
Three other rooms that were shown include the prayer room where prison
chaplains talk to an inmate before execution and the inmates can leave a will,
a room where the detention house chief officially notifies an inmate of the
execution, and one where prosecutors and the detention house chief witness the
hanging.
The ministry, however, did not show the rope for hanging an inmate and the
space to collect the hanged body of the inmate. It also declined to present
where the chamber is located in the detention house ''due to security
reasons.''
Chiba told a press conference Friday, ''It was the most disclosure (of the
chamber) we could do after considering the feelings of death row inmates, those
who are close to them and prison guards as well as security problems.''
Chiba, a former member of the anti-death penalty parliamentarian group, told a
press conference last month after attending the executions of two inmates there
that she has instructed the detention facility to allow the media to visit the
execution chamber, in a bid to stir public debate over the death penalty.
She made the comments at a time when ordinary citizens will be involved in
making decisions on capital cases under the lay judge system.
The reporters who visited the chamber belong to the press club at the Justice
Ministry, and only pool photographers were allowed to take still and moving
images.
Following her first execution order, Chiba also instructed the ministry to
establish a panel to study capital punishment.
A total of 17 death-row inmates have been hanged at the Tokyo execution chamber
since December 2006, when the facility was remodeled.
In the face of criticism over the secrecy surrounding Japan's execution system,
the Justice Ministry started releasing the names of the hanged inmates and the
execution places in December 2007. Before that, it did not disclose executions
themselves.
As of Friday, there are 107 death row inmates in Japan, whose capital sentences
have already been finalized, while seven execution chambers are located in
detention houses in Sapporo, Sendai, Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima and
Fukuoka.
Chiba, a certified lawyer, was a member of the Japan Parliamentary League
against the Death Penalty before assuming her current post in September 2009.
Japan is one of a few advanced countries that have the death penalty.
According to Amnesty International, 139 countries and territories have
abolished the death penalty in law or in practice as of 2009, compared with 58
which continue to use capital punishment.
In 1989, the U.N. General Assembly adopted an international treaty aiming at
the abolition of the death penalty, which Japan has yet to ratify, with the
Geneva-based Human Rights Committee in 2008 saying, ''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.''
A Japanese government survey showed in February that a record 85.6 percent of
respondents consider continuing capital punishment as ''unavoidable.''
==Kyodo
2010-08-27 20:32:11


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