Subject: [cwj 136] Protests as Japan executes three murderers
From: Corporate Watch in Japanese <cwj@corpwatch.org>
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 12:12:32 -0800
Seq: 136
Thursday, November 30 5:14 PM SGT Protests as Japan executes three murderers TOKYO, Nov 30 (AFP) - Three convicted killers were hanged in Japan early on Thursday sparking furious protests from Amnesty International and activists opposed to capital punishment. "We have today executed three persons whose death sentences had been confirmed," the justice ministry said in a one-line statement which, as is customary, omitted the convicts' names and details of where they were hanged. Amnesty International campaigner Akira Ishikawa accused the government of timing the hangings to take place just a day before the end of the current Diet (parliament) session. "Their political motives are very clear. With a December cabinet reshuffle looming, the ministry tried to avoid creating a minister with no execution record," he said. Justice Minister Okiharu Yasuoka, who had not sent anyone to the gallows since being appointed in July, is expected be replaced shortly along with other members of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's cabinet. "These were last-minute executions. It is stunning that they dare take away people's lives only at their convenience," the Amnesty campaigner said. In Japan, inmates often spend years on death row before being executed without warning to themselves or their families. At least another 52 people are on death row in Japan, said Yoshihiro Yasuda, an activist from the Capital Punishment Abolition Forum. He identified the three executed Thursday as Kiyotaka Fujiwara, Takashi Miyawaki and Kunikatsu Oishi. Miyawaki and serial killer Fujiwara were both hanged at a prison in the central Japanese city of Nagoya while Oishi was put to death in Fukuoka, southern Japan, the activist said. Fujiwara, a 52-year-old former fireman, was sentenced to death for murdering eight people over a 10-year period from 1972. Miyawaki, 57, was convicted for killing his estranged wife's parents and sister in 1989. Oishi, 55, received the death sentence for murdering three members of a neighbouring family in 1983 because he suspected they had stolen a hose clamp, reports said. Two members of the opposition Social Democratic Party who are against capital punishment, Nobuto Hosaka and Reiko Oshima, had earlier appealed to the justice ministry in a bid to win clemency, Yasuda said. "As we heard about the planned executions before they took place, two lawmakers directly appealed to the deputy justice ministers to stop them carrying them out," he told AFP. "But the ministry ignored the plea and went ahead with the executions." The executions were the first under Mori's seven-month-old administration, and the first since two prisoners were hanged on December 17 last year. In a government poll of 5,000 adults released in November last year, a record 80 percent of Japanese surveyed said they supported capital punishment, up 5.5-percentage points from 1994. It was the highest level of support since the government started to take polls on the death penalty in 1956. Only 8.8 percent said the death penalty should be abolished. Officials attributed the support to a series of heinous crimes in recent years, such as the nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway by the Aum Supreme Truth cult in March 1995, which killed 12 people and injured thousands more. Japan has executed 39 prisoners since it resumed carrying out death sentences in 1993 after a four-year unofficial moratorium. FAIR USE NOTICE. This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Corporate Watch in Japanese is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability, human rights, economic democracy and social justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. ------------------------------------- Corporate Watch in Japanese Transnational Resource and Action Center (TRAC) P.O. Box 29344 San Francisco, CA 94129 USA Tel: 1-415-561-6472 Fax: 1-415-561-6493 Email: cwj@corpwatch.org URL: http://www.corpwatch-jp.org ------------------------------------- ______________________ The Corporate Watch in Japanese http://www.corpwatch.org/japan (CWJ) mailing list is a moderated email list in English designed to connect activists campaigning against Japanese corporations and investments around the world. * To unsubscribe from the CWJ mailing list, send an email to majordomo@jca.apc.org with text "unsubscribe cwj". To subscribe to the CWJ mailing list, send a message to majordomo@jca.apc.org with the text "subscribe cwj" * The CWJ mailing list is NOT intended for wide distribution. If you would like to post messages from this list somewhere else, we ask that you first contact us at cwj@corpwatch.org ______________________