Japan Press Weekly

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2011 June 8 - 14 [CIVIL RIGHTS]

JCP Inoue calls for transparent interrogation process

Japanese Communist Party representative Inoue Satoshi at a House of Councilors Judicial Committee meeting on June 7 demanded that the whole process of interrogations be filmed in order to prevent the use of illegal questioning tactics.

Citing the recent case resulting in a suicide, Inoue pointed out that assaults or forced confessions during police interviews still frequently take place.

Inoue asked how many cases of improper behavior such as “physical contact” and “language or behavior that extremely harms one’s dignity” were reported last year.

Kuryu Shun’ichi of the National Police Agency answered that 30 instances of improper tactics out of 1,678,000 interrogations were reported last year, but none of them were proven to have been improper.

Since 2008, the agency has assigned a supervisor to each police station to monitor investigative tactics. However, the agency official admitted, the supervisors observed the interrogations for only “one or two minutes” on average.

Inoue stated, “To have police interrogations monitored by someone else in the police force will not eliminate improper interrogation methods.” He again demanded transparency of the whole process of questioning.