Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
60-79)
MS NORMA
KANG MUICO
2 APRIL 2008
Q60 Mr. Illsley: The first question
is in relation to the death penalty in South Korea, which I understand
has not been used for a decade. That leads Amnesty to conclude
that South Korea is an abolitionist state. There is a piece of
legislation that is due to abolish the death penalty but it has
to be implemented by May of this year. Given that there are forthcoming
elections, it does not appear as though there will be time for
that to take place. What is your view on that that?
Ms Muico: It will expire in May
in all likelihood, as it has done under the previous Governments.
So this is not new. It is a trend. It is the second time that
this has happened. They seem to be quite willing to introduce
a Bill, but it just stays in the Legislation and Judiciary Committee
and does not get passed or voted on.
Another worrying aspect is that Lee Myung-bak
has publicly stated that he is for the death penalty. We have
already expressed our concerns in an open letter to the President
in March, stating that South Korea is an abolitionist country
in practice, and that this time it should be not only introduced
in the national assembly but passed, as the procedure for a moratorium
on the death penalty has already been stated. It could also have
a positive knock-on effect. I have spoken to people in Japan and
Mongolia, who look to South Korea to abolish the death penalty
so that it may be seen as a role model for other countries in
the region.
Q61 Mr. Illsley: Although they have
not used it for 10 years, if a sufficiently serious case occurred
now, would South Korea hesitate to carry out the death penalty?
Are they serious about abolition, in that they have not used the
penalty for 10 years, or are they simply paying lip service to
it?
Ms Muico: The past two Governments
were definitely very serious. The previous President was a human
rights lawyer, and the one before that was a dissident. However,
even Lee Myung-bak would hesitate to break that 10-year good performance.
The judicial system is certainly being tested, as there have been
several cases of heinous crimes, following which there has been
a lot of discussion in the media on the death penalty.
Q62 Mr. Illsley: The Foreign Office
has said that the only human rights problem in South Korea is
the death penalty. I would imagine that Amnesty would take issue
with that, because you have highlighted other areas with which
there are problems, such as migrant workers, conscientious objectors,
security law, and refugees and asylum seekers. Would you therefore
take issue with our Foreign Office on its assessment of human
rights issues in South Korea?
Ms Muico: Yes. We have very good
working relations with the FCO, but, right now, the migrant workers'
rights issue is a big concern. The situation is particularly worrying
because there have been targeted crackdowns on migrant workers'
union leaders, some of whom have just been deported. They were
arrested at the end of November 2007 and then summarily deported
in December without the right to appeal. The authorities have
been doing various things. For example, immigration officers have
been issuing warrants for the arrest and detention of the union
leaders. That is something that only a judge can do in South Korea,
but they have been bypassing that law.
There are countless cases of intimidation,
arrests and beatings, and of paid thugs being used to round up
migrant workers' union leaders in vans, in which they are handcuffed
and which do not go to a detention centre until the van is filled
up. Many union members have been surrounding the detention centres,
but the South Korean immigration bureau will deport the leaders
using a back entrance and vans that are not clearly marked as
official. A bread van was used in the detention in December when
they expelled three union leaders.
Little tactics such as that have created
quite a stir and union leaders feel quite vulnerable. When I was
speaking to the Migrants Trade Union in March, it said that its
current leaders were told not to leave the building; and that
when they do, they are surrounded by other people, especially
South Korean nationals, so that they cannot be targeted in future
raids.
Q63 Mr. Illsley: You have mentioned
that you have a good relationship with the Foreign Office in relation
to these issues. Is it taking any notice? Is our Government doing
anything to raise the issues with South Korea?
Ms Muico: Yes. I think that my
predecessor relayed that in the past, when he did a report on
migrant workers in South Korea in 2006. I will continue to work
on the issue, as it will be my next project. I have already spoken
to the British embassy in Seoul on this matter, and it has even
suggested that it would be more effective for a Government to
give certain recommendations on those areas and that it would
be best to go through them. I think that that sort of co-operation
is exactly what is effective.
Chairman: Thank you. We have some questions
about Japan.
Q64 Mr. Hamilton: You made a submission
from Amnesty to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review working
group in January raising concerns about shortcomings in human
rights legislation in Japan, including the death penalty and the
failure to protect the rights of refugees. You also expressed
concerns about the daiyo kangoku—the pre-trial detention
system—and the survival of Japan's military sexual slavery
system. What is your assessment of the current human rights situation
in Japan?
Ms Muico: I think that the human
rights situation in Japan is unique and very difficult. Lawyers,
NGOs and community groups to which I have spoken all consider
themselves to be in the dark ages. It is very difficult to get
the Government to engage with that issue and to get the local
media, rather than the international media, to cover stories that
are not popular with the right-wing Government. In that environment,
it is, of course, very difficult to work on the problem. For example,
the issue of comfort women received lots of press coverage internationally
but had very little domestic press coverage, and people who worked
in the museum that dealt with the comfort women issue were harassed
in February. These are the types of difficulties that have to
be worked on.
I think that a lot more work needs to be
done with regard to the death penalty. I believe that the one
thing that works in Japan's favour is that it is going to the
lay system—the jury system—so it will be possible
to raise the issue of the death penalty, the transparency problems
with the daiyo kangoku system, Japan's obsession with trying to
coerce confession out of prisoners and the number of days that
they can be detained. I believe that the death penalty issue and
the substitute prison system are interconnected with the problem
of the lack of transparency in the judiciary and the criminal
justice system.
Q65 Mr. Hamilton: Do you think that
there is likely to be any imminent change in this situation—this
dark age of human rights that Japan is in?
Ms Muico: It is difficult to say.
The UN Committee on torture, the UN Committee on the Rights of
the Child and other committees, when reviewing Japan's status
and the progress that it has made, have observed that the Japanese
Government have not done much on previous observations and recommendations.
There is a lack of respect for the UN system, which is quite worrying,
considering that Japan has ambitions to be a permanent member
of the UN Security Council. When you make a trip to Japan and
speak to the EU office there, you find that the Japanese do not
tend to listen to the EU or countries within the EU very much,
and that is another worry. They seem to take their cue from the
United States. One member of an NGO has joked that Japan is the
51st state of the United States. In that environment, it is very
difficult. When we had so much success in various Parliaments
around the world on the comfort women resolution and also on the
moratorium on the death penalty, a Diet member said, "Well,
that's the EU. We are not the EU". So, there is this defiance
that there is a cultural difference in Japan that other countries
cannot understand. Of course, that is an excuse. Human rights
violations go beyond cultural differences.
Q66 Ms Stuart: May I probe you on
the death penalty? Some people would say that some human rights
are universal. The United States still has the death penalty.
Did you say that Japan is quite closed to outside pressure on
these issues? Only the US could have any kind of influence, but
as it has the death penalty too, pressure is unlikely to come
from that source.
Ms Muico: There are challenges,
but a more concerted effort will certainly bear fruit. There has
been a lot of media attention outside Japan. It is a matter of
getting the domestic media interested and letting people know
about it, because the Japanese public are not aware of what is
happening in their own country. Executions in Japan are secretive—quite
deliberately. Executions often take place when the Diet—the
Parliament—is in recess or on national holidays. The person
who is supposed to be executed is told hours before, and the families
are told afterwards, not even before. There is no transparency.
Even Government officials—Diet Members—cannot go to
the execution chambers and visit the prisoners. Only direct family
members and the person's lawyer can.
Q67 Ms Stuart: Am I right that many
people have been on death row for decades?
Ms Muico: Absolutely. One such
case was recently in the news. Iwao Hakamada was convicted in
1968 and at first confessed to the crime of killing a family of
four. Immediately afterwards he recanted, and during the trial
he said, "I was forced to confess, the police coerced a confession
out of me. They beat me, they threatened me until I would confess."
There were also irregularities with the evidence that was provided,
but despite all that, he was convicted. Forty years later, one
of the three judges broke four decades of silence and said, "I
thought he was innocent. I really felt that his testimony—his
confession—was coerced." They took all the new evidence
and asked the Supreme Court for a retrial, and that was turned
down last week.
Q68 Ms Stuart: Given that any pressures
are likely to come from inside only, what sources are there for
that greater open and public debate, which might just lead to
a moratorium in the first stage and then potential abolition,
or is the support so overwhelming that that is far off?
Ms Muico: Support can be overwhelming,
because the general public do not know what the issues are: there
is no transparency within the investigation process and there
is a dire necessity to get a confession. The 99.9% conviction
rate is based on confession. There is a good window of opportunity
because of the jury system debate. Lots of people are rightfully
worried that a jury can decide on death penalty cases, and they
are using that to say that we should have a moratorium on the
death penalty. The human rights lawyers are quite active. They
have the support of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations,
but it is divided on the issue. Some want to be a bit more realistic—even
those who are against the death penalty, by all accounts. They
believe that there should not be any substitute system for the
death penalty and that it should be abolished, but, having said
that, they would like to introduce life imprisonment without parole,
just so that the issue could get in there and the death penalty
could eventually be removed over time. Other people think that
we cannot go there because we have to abolish the death penalty
on principle.
Q69 Sir Menzies Campbell: May I explore
the apparent contradiction between an aspiration to be at the
highest level of the United Nations—the Security Council—and
an unwillingness to accept much of what the UN stands for? If
the British Government were to make plain that their support for
Japan's membership of the Security Council depended upon a more
sympathetic attitude towards the UN, would that have any effect,
or is theobduracy so engrained that it would pass over the heads
of the people making the decision?
Ms Muico: No, I think that that
would be useful. Certainly this delegation going to Japan will
raise interests, and there will be concern about what you would
have to say after your visits. I think that, in some ways, they
are banking on hiding behind the fact that one of the permanent
members on the Security Council has the death penalty. However,
it is an exaggeration to say that they do not listen to the EU.
NGOs in Japan are frustrated, but they will listen, especially
if there is a lot of international attention on this matter. For
some strange reason, Prime Minister Abe apologised as an individual
to President Bush[6]
because there was a lot of attention[7]
on the issue of `comfort women'. He felt compelled to make a statement
because there was so much media and press.[8]
The Japanese are not immune to government pressure; this is about
what they do about it, and trying to ensure that they do the right
thing and monitoring that.
Q70 Mr. Illsley: Is there any pressure
from within the Japanese Parliament? You said that some executions
are done secretly or when Parliament is not sitting. In a similar
situation in this country, there would be pressure groups and
parliamentary groups of MPs campaigning on the issue. Is there
any movement within the Japanese Parliament to try and end this
system of executions, particularly secret ones?
Ms Muico: There is a parliamentary
group within the Diet that supports a moratorium on the death
penalty and works closely with the NGOs. There is a network of
NGOs that want to abolish the death penalty. It is imaginative
and active, but the problem is that the general public seem not
to care as much. In South Korea, anything will get a reaction
out of the people. They will not put up with things—even
if something is quite detrimental in terms of a strategic point
of view, you will get a reaction from the general public, and
it is quite buoyant. You do not have the same society in Japan.
They are willing to sacrifice a bit more for the good of the country
and the society.
Q71 Chairman: May I ask you about
the issue of reparations for people who were put into sexual slavery
in the second world war? What is the progress on that?
Ms Muico: We had something passed
in the Parliament in the Philippines in March and we are trying
to build up momentum because it had slowed down. We would like
the matter to be raised when you are in Japan, because a resolution
was passed in the European Parliament and also in the Dutch Parliament.
We feel that there is NGO fatigue perhaps, so if the message could
be relayed by a Government, rather than by Amnesty continuing
to hound the Japanese Government, it might have more effect on
reparations. However, so far, the Japanese Government have not
engaged with us on this issue.
Q72 Mr. Illsley: What evidence is
there that the daiyo kangoku system of detention involves serious
human rights abuses? Is there any prospect of reforming this procedure?
Ms Muico: Yes, I think that in
some ways there might be a better chance, because it affects a
larger number of citizens than the death penalty. Suspects can
be detained for 23 days without charge, and police use this period
to interrogate and to coerce a confession. There has been some
progress in this area, although it is still in the talking stage.
The most worrying thing is that lawyers cannot be present during
the interrogation. With support and raising awareness on this
issue, there can be some changes, at least in this stage with
lawyers allowed to be present during interrogation as part of
basic rights. Another thing that I would flag up is that there
is no digital recording of police interrogation. That is quite
important, because if you get a digital recording, the coercive
nature would be reduced because there would be proof that the
confession was not given voluntarily.
Q73 Mr. Illsley: Well, any recording,
whether digital or analogue. It still seems inconceivable that
a country such as Japan could have a system such as that, where
people can be detained for 23 days and be abused—
Ms Muico: They can be interrogated
for 16 hours continuously at night time.
Q74 Mr. Illsley: To be interrogated
like that in a country that we regard as quite civilised beggars
belief.
Ms Muico: That is the most difficult
part of our work. Most people in the world think that Japan is
a very wealthy country that has been a democracy for a long time
and that it would not have human rights abuses on such a large
and dramatic scale. Yet, it is going on. It is not only Japanese
citizens who are affected, but foreign nationals. Quite recently
a Swedish journalist went through this horrible system.
Q75 Mr. Illsley: I just find that
incredible. I remember visiting Japan in 1990 and being told by
our embassy there that this is a crime-free area where you can
leave your car open and you do not have to worry about theft and
this, that and the other. From that point of view, we looked upon
it as a modern, civilised society, with very little crime. To
learn that they have a system of organised brutal interrogation
such as this seems crazy, particularly as we have had a couple
of high-profile murder cases in Japan involving British women.
It just seem crazy that this is still going on.
Ms Muico: It is the criminal justice
system. The general public do not want to be associated with crime
and with anything that may make them look dirty or bad. You have
to understand that when someone is given the death penalty, it
is not just the family of the person who has been accused and
convicted that is shunned from society. The family members of
the victim are also shunned from society, because they are in
some way implicated in a terrible heinous crime.
Q76 Mr. Illsley: That is an aspect
of a lot of Middle Eastern societies.
Ms Muico: But a lot of societies
impose so much pressure that people feel compelled to leave the
neighbourhood, change their names, and never tell their children.
Mr. Illsley: We look upon Japan as a
country equal to ourselves in status in terms of civil and human
rights. To trade with it and so on and to accept it as an equal
when it is carrying out things that we did away with in the stone
age in terms of interrogation seems incredible.
Chairman: We can pursue those matters
in other ways, and the Japanese Government will no doubt wish
to send a submission on that to us.
Ms Stuart: I caution us about being quite
so condemnatory about a highly civilised 21st-century country
and comparing it with the stone age.
Mr. Illsley: Sorry.
Q77 Ms Stuart: Do you have any statistics
about how many people are held for 23 days without any lawyers
or any support present compared with the percentage of how many
people go through the court system?
Ms Muico: They may be available.
The Japanese Federation of Bar Associations will have statistics
on that. On lawyers not being present, that is never allowed,
so that would apply to anyone who goes through the system.
Q78 Ms Stuart: Is that something
that you can put in context? It is not all that long since we
introduced the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and other
safeguards, so it would be helpful if you could put the matter
in context.
Ms Muico: I don't have the statistics
right now.[9]
Q79 Sir Menzies Campbell: My question
is rather general. I cannot help thinking of the post-war reconstruction
of Japan, which was carried out largely under the direction of
the United States, in particular under General MacArthur. How
far do these practices and the length of the law—the process
that you have described—go back? Are they are century or
half a century old, or are they more recent?
Ms Muico: The daiyo kangoku system
was established in the early 1900s—I believe it was 1908.
It was just the way in which things were done. In 2006 the system
was put into a new legislation, so they allowed that type of system
to continue.
6 Note by witness: Not to the victims of sexual
slavery. Back
7
Note by witness: In the US Back
8
Note by witness: Regarding the resolution in the US Congress
calling for Japan to make an unambiguous apology for the suffering
of the `comfort women'. Back
9
Ev 103 Back
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