Dec. 7
JAPAN:
Japanese lawmakers propose alternative to death penalty
Japanese lawmakers opposed to the death penalty say they will propose
mandatory life in prison for capital cases in a bid to dent overwhelming
public support for capital punishment.
"If lawmakers propose lifetime imprisonment as an alternative to the death
penalty, the Japanese public is not likely to reject it," Shizuka Kamei,
head of a group of 100 lawmakers opposed to the death penalty, told an
international conference in Tokyo on capital punishment.
Japan is the only major industrialized nation other than the United States
to practice capital punishment. The latest government poll found that more
than 80 percent of Japanese supported the death penalty and a mere six
percent were opposed.
But Kamei, a prominent lawmaker purged from the ruling party in a highly
publicized fallout with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi this year, said
that opinions would change if there were a true debate.
"If simply asked whether a person who commited an atrocious crime should
be executed, it is natural to say yes," Kamei said. "But there are cases
in which criminals can be transformed into Buddha-like people who feel
deep regret."
Kamei, a former top police investigator, told AFP later he opposes the
death penalty because of the possibility of executing innocent people.
Japan, which has hanged only one inmate this year, has come under fire for
giving inmates only a few hours notice before hanging them in order to
ward off last-minute appeals.
Justice Minister Seiken Sugiura promised to halt the death penalty when he
was appointed October 31 but he backtracked within hours.
Hundreds of legal professionals from around the world are taking part in
the two-day conference in Tokyo co-organized by the European Commission,
the American Bar Association (ABA) and the Japan Federation of Bar
Association.
ABA president Michael Greco said that while his group did not have a
position on the death penalty as a moral issue, it wanted "fairness in
application of laws."
"Lawyers, judges and court systems have the solemn responsibility of
ensuring justice (in) serious criminal cases, especially in those where
death sentences were imposed," he said.
"We are charged in the legal profession with guaranteeing the due process
rights of defendants," he said.
(source: Agence France Presse)
CHINA:
Death Penalties by Arrangement in China
Almost all of the organs transplanted in China come from executed
criminals: the accusation had been made for several years by Chinese in
exile, today it has been confirmed by Beijing. A major confession which is
part of an attempt to eliminate the abuses and excesses which surround the
massive use of the death penalty in China, without however questioning the
principle of capital punishment itself.
The Vice-Minister of Health, Huang Jiufe, announced officially during an
international conference in Manila, that China was preparing a law
destined to regulate organ donations, which he himself called a "gray
zone." He admitted that if China was the second country in the world,
after the United States, in the number of organ transplants, it has never
been able to obtain international recognition, due to the lack of
transparency concerning the provenance of the organs. The economic
magazine Caijing states that only 5% of the organs grafted come from free
donations, and 95% from executed criminals. A real market has formed, in
which the hospital contacts the police when it needs an organ, and the
transaction is carried out through a court so as to be able to recover the
organs of an executed criminal. It costs from a few thousand to a few ten
thousand euros for a kidney or a liver, due to the "public relations"
fees, a euphemism for the bribes paid all along this sinister medical
chain. "Grafts have become a tool for earning money, which is contrary to
government policy," denounced the Vice-Minister.
Officially the executed criminals whose organs are taken have given their
consent. But the conditions for this consent are far from being clear, and
incidents reported by the press show that this is not always the case. In
May 2000, a Jiangxi court had sold the kidney of a man executed by firing
squad. When his father discovered it, he committed suicide. In Gansu, a
case of an organ removed without prior authorization was judged by a court
which gave a modest compensation of 2000 yuans (200 euros) to the family.
For the Chinese, the physical integrity of the dead body is very
important, from whence the low number of voluntary organ donations.
For years exiles, particularly the famous dissident Harry Wu, have been
denouncing this scandal. In 2001, a Chinese former military doctor
testified before the American Congress that he had twice participated in
removing kidneys from executed criminals who were still breathing. The
confirmation of these practices aims at giving a more respectable facade
to the use of the death penalty for which China holds the world record: at
least 3400 executions last year according to Amnesty International, the
exact figure never being known. A few weeks ago, Beijing had announced
another reform in view of a better application of the death penalty: the
transfer to the National Supreme Court of death sentence appeals, hitherto
judged by provincial courts, considered too subject to the influence of
local authorities. By "cleaning up" the most indefensible aspects of the
application of capital punishment, Beijing hopes to give a sense of
ordinariness to the use of the death penalty itself, which enjoys wide
public support. But even this first step will take years to be
implemented: a delay which will cost some thousands of human lives.
(source: Liberation, Dec. 5)
