Death row prisoners in Japan only find out they are going to die on the morning of their execution. Some spend decades not knowing if the next day they will be taken from their cells and hanged. According to Amnesty International the harsh conditions on Japan's death row have a devastating impact on the prisoners’ mental health.

As a new government is poised to take power in Japan, Amnesty International has produced a damning report on the country’s system of capital punishment. Newsline spoke to the report’s author, Amnesty’s Health and Human Rights coordinator, Jim Welsh.

“What we found was that prisoners were exposed to very serious levels of stress, and that there were prisoners on death row who had clear signs of mental illness. Under international standards prisoners with mental illness should be protected from the death penalty.”

Listen to the Newsline interview:

The Amnesty report paints a grim picture of life on Japan’s death row, where 102 prisoners are currently awaiting execution. The inmates largely live in solitary confinement, isolated from the outside world. They are allowed two half-hour exercise sessions a week in summer, three in winter. For the rest they are not even allowed to move around in their cells, and are forced to stay sitting down. They are not permitted to watch television or have contact with other prisoners. Visits are infrequent and may be as short as five minutes.

Secrecy
Not that it is easy to gain a clear picture of the way capital punishment is applied in Japan. “The problem facing any reformer in Japan is the secrecy of the death penalty,” says Amnesty’s Jim Welsh. “It’s very difficult to get information. Even the prisoners themselves don’t know when they’re going to be executed.”

It is this uncertainty that places the worst mental burden on the death row inmates. The policy is to inform prisoners of their execution only on the day they are going to be hanged. The justification is that this supposedly helps inmate to “maintain a calm state of mind”.

Cruel
However, Amnesty’s report concludes that the effect is precisely the opposite. Commenting on the report, the group’s UK Director Kate Allen says “Japan’s death row system is driving prisoners into the depths of mental illness but they are still being taken and hanged at only hours’ notice in an utterly cruel fashion.”

Some prisoner’s have to live with the uncertainty for decades, says Mr Welsh. “One case documented in the report is of a prisoner who was convicted first in 1968 and since that time has been undergoing trials, appeals, and finally his period on death row without ever having a date set.”

Elephants, dragons
The prisoner in question, 73-year-old Hakamada Iwao, a former professional boxer, is thought to be the world’s longest-serving death row inmate. According to Amnesty he has been displaying signs of mental illness for as long as 30 years. In a recent medical assessment he was asked if he understood what an execution was. His reply: “The wisdom never dies. On that kind of wisdom, this is wisdom. It never dies. There are lots of ladies in the world, lots of animals. Everyone is living and feeling something. Elephants, dragons. No way will I die.”

Mr Welsh’s report documents cases of prisoners with mental problems ranging from delusions to schizophrenia. There are reportedly prisoners who believe they have purple blood, have murdered a ‘cyborg’ rather than a human being, or have received ‘prize money’ from the Japanese prime minister.

Support
Although Japan has been criticised by the United Nations Human Rights Committee for the lack of transparency and cruelty in its capital punishment system, it is by no means a controversial issue in the country itself. “There is considerable public support for the death penalty in Japan and this is a fact that’s used by the government in its reaction to critics,” says Jim Welsh. However, his report describes the death penalty in Japan as “an anomaly”. The country has a relatively low murder rate, and in fact only around one percent of those convicted of capital crimes are sentenced to death.

Last week saw a historic election for the Democratic Party of Japan over the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been in power for an almost uninterrupted 54-year stretch, and Mr Welsh hopes this could finally offer a chance for Japan to open a public debate on capital punishment:

“A new government is coming to power and that opens the opportunity for dialogue and the possibility for Japan to become part of the majority of the world rather than being out of step with the international community."