Photo/Illutration The Okazaki Police Station in Aichi Prefecture where a man died under police custody (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

A handcuff belt is defined in the regulations for enforcing the law on penal detention facilities as a “waist belt of an appropriate width that is equipped on both sides with elastic rings for fastening the wrists.”

Unlike standard handcuffs, the belt comes with three rings to tie the arms to the trunk of the body.

A 43-year-old male detainee died earlier this month in a cell at the Aichi prefectural police’s Okazaki Police Station.

The naked man was restrained for more than 100 hours on end, with his arms shackled with a handcuff belt and his legs with arresting ropes. And he would not eat anything, officials said.

Security camera footage from inside the detention room showed, among other things, how multiple police officers kicked the man lying on the floor. All that sounds only too cruel.

The man, who had a chronic disease, was prescribed drugs for treating a mental illness but was given no medicine for his diabetes.

One of the police officers involved in the case was quoted as saying the man behaved violently and didn’t do as he was told.

I am left to wonder, however, if the man couldn’t have been sent to a hospital for medical care, for example, instead of being held under detention.

I had deja vu, as the tragedy reminded me of another gruesome case that took place at Nagoya Prison, also in the prefecture, 20 years ago.

Leather bindings used as physical restraints laced up the abdomens of inmates strongly enough to damage their internal organs, leaving one dead and another injured.

Prison officers involved in the abuse were found guilty, and the scandal prompted the former Prison Law to be revised into the current law on penal detention facilities.

The handcuff belt used in the latest case looks eerily like the leather bindings of 2002. I am surprised to learn that the physical restraints, for which the modifier “disciplinary” would be more fitting, were used in a substitute prison, a controversial institution for interrogating suspects under detention.

In a separate development, it also emerged earlier this month that 22 prison officers had abused inmates at Nagoya Prison. The successive cases of physical abuse by public servants betrays their lack of awareness of human rights.

Some say the state of things surrounding penal detention facilities are a telltale gauge of the level of human rights in the corresponding nation.

Human rights will continue to be repeatedly infringed upon behind closed doors, so long as the circumstances, which are lagging well behind the times, remain as they are.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 16

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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