 High court orders a retrial over freedom of speech suppression during war The Tokyo High Court on March 10 supported the plaintiffs' claim for a retrial of deceased family members convicted of violating the prewar Maintenance of Public Order Law. Judge Nakagawa Taketaka acknowledged that the former defendants were tortured and stated, "The credibility of their confessions is highly doubtful." It is the first time that a high court ordered a retrial over the Maintenance of Public Order Law which is known as a notoriously bad law because of its political and ideological repression. The plaintiffs are five family members of former defendants, including Kimura Maki, wife of the late Kimura Toru. In 1942, the Special Political Police ("Tokko") carried out a major suppression of free speech, known as the Yokohama Incident. The "Tokko" criticized Hosokawa Karoku's article "Development of world's history and Japan" published in the "Kaizo" magazine as "communist propaganda" and charged him with violation of the Publication Law. Alleging that a gathering that Hosokawa held with editors and researchers was a Japanese Communist Party conference discussing its reorganization, it arrested about 70 editors, tortured them into forced confessions, and killed five of them in the process. Many defendants were convicted after Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration and surrendered to the Allies. Former defendants and their family members insisted that the Maintenance of Public Order Law was nullified after Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration. (end) |