TOKYO (UCAN): Japanese Catholic bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission expressed sadness after a 39-year-old Tomohiro Kato, a convicted murderer, was executed on July 26, and demanded the abolition of the death penalty saying, “the violence of the death penalty can never build a peaceful society.”
Kato was convicted of killing seven people in a stabbing rampage in Tokyo’s popular Akihabara electronics district in 2008.
The Justice and Peace Commission called the death penalty an “attack on the inviolability and dignity of personality” and “so is unacceptable.”
Kato’s hanging was the fourth execution under the administration of prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who assumed office in October 2021. The first three executions were carried out last December.
The bishops’ July 26 letter, was issued by Capuchin Bishop Wayne Francis Berndt, chairperson of the bishops’ commission, and was addressed to Kishida and Yoshihisa Furukawa, the minister of Justice.
On July 26, 2018, six Aum Shinrikyo-related convicts on death row were executed all at once. I am terrified that the nation dared to choose this same day and once again eliminated a human recognising his life not worth living
Noting that the Church works to abolish the death penalty worldwide, the letter recalled the 2018 executions of six members of a cult called Aum Shinrikyo, who were convicted of killing 13 people in a chemical attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.
“On July 26, 2018, six Aum Shinrikyo-related convicts on death row were executed all at once. I am terrified that the nation dared to choose this same day and once again eliminated a human recognising his life not worth living,” the letter said.
Referring to the execution of four political prisoners on July 25, by the military junta in Myanmar, the first such executions in more than three decades, the commission noted that the Japanese government condemned it, expressing worry that the executions would “invite further isolation” of Myanmar in the international community.
“However, we are seriously worried” that the Japanese government has taken the same step of violence that might cause the “depreciation of its international status,” the letter said.
The violence of the death penalty can never build a peaceful society. Rather, the barbarism that goes against the times creates new violence,
“The violence of the death penalty can never build a peaceful society. Rather, the barbarism that goes against the times creates new violence,” the letter reiterated.
Rights groups including Amnesty International also came out against the execution.
The hanging of Kato “is a callous attack on the right to life. Regardless of the crimes he had committed, he should never have suffered the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment at the hands of the state,” Hideaki Nakagawa, director of Amnesty International Japan, said in a statement.
Nakagawa said Kato was in the process of requesting a second retrial.
“Carrying out an execution during a request for retrial clearly violates international safeguards set out to protect the rights of those facing the death penalty,” he said.
Amnesty also demanded that Japan declare “a moratorium on executions as a first step toward abolishing the death penalty entirely—and commute all death sentences to terms of imprisonment.”
