Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Japan.htm
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CAUTION: The following links have
been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Japan. Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No
attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in adjacent
countries and/or regions. Meanwhile,
check out some of the Term-Paper
resources that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Japan U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/japan/
[accessed 26 July
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT Prison conditions
generally met international standards, although some prisons continued to
lack adequate medical care and sufficient heating in the winter or cooling in
the summer. Freedom House
Country Report 2018 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/japan/freedom-world/2018 [accessed 13 May
2020] DOES DUE PROCESS PREVAIL
IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL MATTERS? -- Constitutional guarantees of due
process are generally upheld. However observers have argued that trials often
favor the prosecution. There are reports that people are often detained on
flimsy evidence, arrested multiple times for the same alleged crime, or
subjected to lengthy interrogations leading to forced confessions. Police can
detain suspects up to 23 days without charge. Access to those in pretrial
detention is sometimes limited. In July 2017,
nearly 300 categories of conspiracy offenses were added to criminal law in
order to help identify terror plots and organized crime networks. Critics,
including the UN, raised concerns that the changes gave the government too
much power to restrict civil liberties. Conclusions and
recommendations of the Committee against Torture
[PDF] U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment -- Doc. CAT/C/JPN/CO/1 3 August 2007 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/cat/observations/japan2007.pdf [accessed 2 March
2013] Interrogation rules
and confessions 16. The Committee
is deeply concerned at the large number of convictions in criminal trials
based on confessions, in particular in light of the lack of effective
judicial control over the use of pre-trial detention and the
disproportionately high number of convictions over acquittals. The Committee
is also concerned at the lack of means for verifying the proper conduct of
interrogations of detainees while in police custody, in particular the
absence of strict time limits for the duration of interrogations and the fact
that it is not mandatory to have defence counsel
present during all interrogations. In addition, the Committee is concerned
that, under domestic legislation, voluntary confessions made as a result of
interrogations not in conformity with the Convention may be admissible in
court, in violation of article 15 of the Convention. The State party
should ensure that the interrogation of detainees in police custody or
substitute prisons is systematically monitored by mechanisms such as
electronic and video recording of all interrogations; that detainees are guaranteed
access to and the presence of defence counsel during interrogation; and that
recordings are made available for use in criminal trials. In addition, the
State party should promptly adopt strict rules concerning the length of
interrogations, with appropriate sanctions for non-compliance. The State
party should amend its Code of Criminal Procedure to ensure full conformity
with article 15 of the Convention. The State party
should provide the Committee with information on the number of confessions made
under compulsion, torture or threat, or after prolonged arrest or detention,
that were not admitted into evidence. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 JUSTICE SYSTEM - The daiyo kangoku system, which
allows police to detain suspects for up to 23 days, continued to facilitate
torture and other ill-treatment to extract confessions during interrogation.
The Special Committee of the Legislative Council under the Ministry of
Justice continued to discuss potential reforms to the criminal justice
system. Govinda Prasad Mainali, a Nepalese national, was acquitted of murder on
7 November after spending 15 years in prison. He was ill-treated and denied access
to a lawyer while being held under the daiyo kangoku system. In July 2011, the prosecution handed over
evidence that subsequently proved him innocent. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For current
articles:: Search Amnesty
International Website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=japan+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 5 January 2019] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61610.htm [accessed 2 February
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61610.htm [accessed 4 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law
prohibits such practices, and the government generally respected these
provisions in practice. However, there were isolated reports by bar
associations, human rights groups, and prisoners that police and prison
officials sometimes committed abuses. Although prison
rules remained confidential, reported punishments included forcing Japanese
prisoners to kneel motionless in an empty cell for several hours at a time
and requiring foreigners and inmates with disabilities to sit on a hard
stool. While the Prison Law Enforcement Regulation stipulates that the
maximum time prisoners may be held in single cells is 6 months, wardens
continued to have broad leeway in enforcing punishments selectively,
including "minor solitary confinement," which may be imposed for a
minimum of 1 and not more than 60 days. Parole may not be granted for any
reason, including medical and humanitarian reasons, until an inmate has
served two-thirds of his or her sentence. Human rights
organizations reported that death row prisoners were held for years in
solitary confinement with little contact with anyone but prison guards. The law and the
criminal code include safeguards to ensure that suspects cannot be compelled
to confess to a crime and that they cannot be convicted or punished in cases
where a suspect's confession is the only evidence. Unlike in 2004, there were
no reports that police used physical violence that included kicking and
beating as well as psychological intimidation during interrogation to obtain
confessions. A significant number of all criminal cases going to trial
included confessions, reflecting the priority the judicial system placed on
admission of guilt. Unlike in 2004,
there were no reports that prison guards sexually abused female inmates. On
January 28, the prison officer who raped and impregnated a female inmate in
2003 was convicted and sentenced to a three‑year prison term. There was
no information on the case of the male prison warden charged with engaging in
sexual acts with a female inmate in 2004. All material
used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for
noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, " Torture by Police, Forced
Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st
Century- Japan", http://gvnet.com/torture/Japan.htm, [accessed
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