Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
80-82)
MS NORMA
KANG MUICO
2 APRIL 2008
Q80 Sir Menzies Campbell: It was
custom, but then it became the subject of statutory enactment?
Ms Muico: Yes.[10]
Q81 Chairman: A final question. You
touched on this in some of the earlier answers: is the new UN
human rights council—the new UN system—likely to lead
to improvements in human rights in Japan or in either of the Koreas,
or is it too early to say?
Ms Muico: It was designed to be
revised, so that countries had to be more answerable, so I hope
the answer is yes. We all have our eyes on Geneva at the moment,
because it is starting its first review sessions. At this point,
I cannot comment. The system is much better laid out, so it should
work more effectively. All countries are reviewed under the universal
periodic review.
Q82 Chairman: In a different context,
people said that that factor will not lead to much change in practice,
because countries operate as political blocs to protect their
own. In the wider sense, leaving aside specific countries, some
countries operate to put certain countries in the dock and keep
other countries out of it.
Ms Muico: That cannot be done
so easily now. Every country is reviewed every four years. It
is not the case that, for example, if a country has signed a treaty
body it could delay submitting a report. It is not the case that,
for example, if a country has signed a treaty, it could delay
submitting a report. You cannot review a country unless it has
submitted a report, and Japan is quite late with its report-writing,
as are a lot of other countries, but in this way they are reviewed
no matter what every four years. That is one aspect to our advantage.
The other is that the three countries who get to review the countries
form a troika, and those three countries are selected randomly.
It could be a friendly country, if you are lucky, and it could
be a neutral country. Any country can be lobbied to do their job,
because then they will get reviewed as well, so it is harder to
go round that.
Chairman: Thank you very much for your
time and for coming to speak to us today. We shall now break for
about two minutes so that we can change our witnesses over and
for any members of the public who wish to leave, this would be
an appropriate moment.
10 Note by witness: Under the old Prison Law
of 1908 the daiyo kangoku system was meant to only hold
arrestees temporarily until they were brought before judges, that
is used as substitute prisons temporarily (due to overcrowding
at the time). But the new Prison Law of 2006 retains the use of
the system and gives them the legal status as an institution for
detaining arrestees, thus, no longer merely a provisional option. Back
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