Japan has appointed a new justice minister who opposes the death penalty, raising hopes among activists that he will push for the abolition of capital punishment.
Apart from the United States, Japan is the only major industrialised democracy to execute criminals, usually for multiple murder, and now has 111 convicts on death row, according to justice officials.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan's centre-left government appointed Satsuki Eda, 69, a law expert educated at Japan's top University of Tokyo and at Oxford in Britain, as the new justice minister in a cabinet reshuffle today.
Mr Eda was a founding member of a Japanese lawmakers' group that supports the activities of the London-based rights group Amnesty International, which has long campaigned against the death penalty.
The new minister is "personally against'' capital punishment, an official at his office confirmed, adding that Mr Eda would "ponder carefully" how to act.
A text - written by a secretary to the upper house lawmaker in 2000 and still posted on Mr Eda's official website - says that "parliamentarian Eda is an advocate of the abolition of the death penalty".
Mr Eda opposes executions mainly due to the belief that "a state should not commit murder", the risk of errors, the mental burden on executioners, and an international trend towards abolition, the aide wrote.
The Japan branch of Amnesty International has close relations with Mr Eda, said Osamu Amano, one of its anti-death penalty campaigners.
"We hope he will work for the scrapping of the death penalty... we know he is strongly interested in human rights and has passionately worked to promote them," Amano said.
The number of executions in Japan has significantly dropped since the DPJ came to power in September 2009.
The only executions since then came in July 2010 when then justice minister Keiko Chiba, also an opponent of capital punishment, nonetheless approved and witnessed the executions of 2 murder convicts.
She then announced a review of the death penalty and opened the doors to a mystery-shrouded execution chamber to media for the first time, in order to encourage debate.
Ms Chiba was replaced in a September cabinet reshuffle, but her successor stepped down in November over a gaffe, and the post had been filled since then by the chief cabinet secretary.
Source: Herald Sun, January 14, 2011
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