The.Economist.2007-02-10 (966424), страница 15
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On the edge of the town one local,Mohammad Nurul Islam, points to where his ancestral village lies, three kilometres into the stream. Hisland was submerged only last year. Until then, he was a farmer; now he is a boatman, ferryingpassengers over his fields. In March, when ice-melt begins cascading down from the Himalayas, the riverwill rise and do worse damage. According to engineers at the town's decrepit public-works office, withouturgent and massive construction of embankments, Shirajganj will be permanently submerged next year.There is no serious effort to prevent this. And, again, the reason is the vicious political competitiveness ofthe begums and their parties.
Since 2001, engineers have submitted more than ten proposals forembankment projects, worth 400m takas ($6m), to the finance ministry in Dhaka. They had no response.The reason, they say, is that the town's penultimate parliamentary representative, a member of the AL,was a great sponsor of embankment-building. Therefore, or so they argue, his BNP successor wantednothing to do with it—though he did build some nice flower-beds in the town.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipJapanese justiceConfess and be done with itFeb 8th 2007 | TOKYOFrom The Economist print editionAlmost everyone accused of a crime in Japan signs a confession, guilty or notAltamira FilmA TAXI driver in Toyama prefecture is arrested for rape and attempted rape,confesses to both crimes, is convicted after a brief trial and serves his threeyears in prison.
Meanwhile, another man, arrested on rape charges, alsoconfesses to the two crimes the first man was convicted for. He, too, goes tojail and serves his time. Is this a story by Jorge Luis Borges, a case oftrumped-up charges from the annals of Stalinist Russia, a trick question in aCambridge tripos? None of the above. It is a recent instance, and not anuncommon one, of the Japanese judicial system at work.On January 26th Jinen Nagase, Japan's justice minister, apologised for thewrongful arrest of the taxi driver and declared that an investigation wouldtake place.
After all, the suspect had an alibi, evidence that he could not havecommitted the crime and had denied vociferously having done so. But afterthe third day in detention without access to the outside world, he waspersuaded to sign a confession.With too many instances of wrongful arrest and conviction, few expectanything to come from the justice ministry's investigation. But the spotlight has begun to shine on thepractices of police interrogation as well as on the court's presumption of guilt.
More and more innocentvictims of Japan's judicial zeal are going public with grim accounts of their experiences at the hands of thepolice and the court system.Now a new film about wrongful arrest by one of Japan's most respected directors, Masayuki Suo, has justopened to critical acclaim. The movie, entitled “I Just Didn't Do It”, is based on a true story about a youngman who was accused of molesting a schoolgirl on a crowded train—and refused adamantly to sign aconfession.
Thanks to support from friends and family, the real-life victim finally won a retrial after twoyears of protesting his innocence, and is today a free man.The film, which was premièred in America and Britain before opening in Japan, depicts how suspects,whether guilty or innocent, are brutalised by the Japanese police, and how the judges side with theprosecutors. Mr Suo argues that suspects are presumed guilty until proven innocent, and that the oddsare stacked massively against them being so proven.The statistics would seem to bear him out.
Japan is unique among democratic countries in thatconfessions are obtained from 95% of all people arrested, and that its courts convict 99.9% of all thesuspects brought before them. Prosecutors are ashamed of being involved in an acquittal and fear thatlosing a case will destroy their careers. Judges get promotion for the speed with which they process theircase-loads. And juries do not exist, though there is talk of introducing a watered-down system calledsaiban-in for open-and-shut cases. Apparently, members of the public are not to be trusted with casesthat might involve special knowledge. Those will still be heard and ruled on—as are all cases in Japantoday—by judges alone.Despite Article 38 of the Japanese constitution, which guarantees an accused person's right to remainsilent, the police and the prosecutors put maximum emphasis on obtaining a confession rather thanbuilding a case based on evidence.
The official view is that confession is an essential first step inrehabilitating offenders. Japanese judges tend to hand down lighter sentences when confessions areaccompanied by demonstrations of remorse. Even more important, prosecutors have the right to ask forlenient sentences when the accused has been especially co-operative.It is how the police obtain these confessions that troubles human-rights activists.
A suspect can be heldfor 48 hours without legal counsel or contact with the outside world. After that, he or she is turned over tothe public prosecutor for another 24 hours of grilling. A judge can then grant a further ten days ofdetention, which can be renewed for another ten days.Japan's constitution also states that confessions obtained under compulsion, torture or threat, or afterprolonged periods of detention, cannot be admitted as evidence. Yet threats and even torture arereckoned to be used widely in detention centres—especially as interrogators are not required to recordtheir interviews. Accidental death during custody happens suspiciously often.
Facing up to a possible 23days of continuous browbeating, or worse, could persuade many wrongfully arrested people to accepttheir fate and sign a confession as the quickest way to put the whole sorry mess behind them.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group.
All rights reserved.About sponsorshipSouth-East AsiaLet's all bash SingaporeFeb 8th 2007 | BANGKOKFrom The Economist print editionThe rich little place that the others love to hateAFPSINGAPORE won South-East Asia's football championship on February 4thin a final against Thailand that was mostly peaceful, despite a badtempered first leg in which the Thais stomped off the pitch and sulked for15 minutes. The players were doing no more than imitate their military-rungovernment, which has been in a strop with Singapore since Singapore'sdeputy prime minister met Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed Thai leader,last month. In protest, top-level meetings with Singaporean officials werecancelled.
General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, the Thai junta's leader, accusedSingapore of spying on Thailand, using the telecoms business it bought lastyear from Mr Thaksin's family. He told his soldiers to stop using theirmobiles and go back to walkie-talkies.Despite 40 years of expressing fraternal warmth at meetings of theAssociation of South-East Asian Nations, the region's leaders never miss anopportunity to pick a fight with Singapore. In recent years, Singaporeanfirms, many of them state-backed, have bought businesses across theregion, providing cause for paranoia. Indonesian parliamentarians claimedthis month that their military secrets were also at risk because theSingaporeans had bought into a local satellite firm.Not envious at allEven sand is a matter of national security.
On February 6th, an Indonesian ban on sand exports came intoforce, following a similar move by Malaysia some years ago. Singapore buys the sand to reclaim land fromthe sea and increase its puny terrain. Indonesia's official reason for the ban was to stop the environmentaldamage caused by sand mining. But a senior navy man let slip that it was motivated by various diplomaticspats with Singapore. The Indonesian navy has now sent no fewer than eight warships to its maritimeborder with Singapore to intercept suspected sand-smugglers. At the same time, the Indonesian sandshovellers' association, facing unemployment, is threatening to sue the government over the ban.The Malaysians, always up for a row with their estranged ex-spouse (Singapore and Malaysia were in abrief, unhappy union in the 1960s), are blaming their recent floods on Singapore's land reclamation.Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's disgruntled former prime minister, has sought to undermine his successor,Abdullah Badawi, by accusing him of secretly negotiating with the Singaporeans to lift the sand ban.
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